


Philia

by eventidefalls, ShunRenDan



Category: Final Fantasy XV, Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-05
Updated: 2020-02-17
Packaged: 2020-06-03 17:50:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 49,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19469047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eventidefalls/pseuds/eventidefalls, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShunRenDan/pseuds/ShunRenDan
Summary: Running a Chocobo Ranch that doubles as an armory isn't easy. Neither is finding your lost brother or mastering an ancient power capable of banishing the darkness, but hey, who's Roxas to say?





	1. Where The Wind Blows

**Author's Note:**

> This is a rewrite of Brotherhood. To those who have read the first version of it, thank you very much. Here we are again, but with a rewrite of the chapters that we have already put up, as well as a new thing altogether.

The worst part about living on a chocobo farm was the fact that sleeping in beyond six in the morning — for any normal human being — was absolutely impossible. Between the birdsong and the sound of squawking outside of Roxas's window, or the way that the birds tended to bonk their beaks against the window over his bed, he really was doomed to wake up early until the day he died.

Well, then, or the day that he finally convinced Ven to trade beds with him.

He didn't know which was more likely to come first.

Roxas could already hear their father outside, tending to the babes and providing them the feed they needed. He woke up earlier than any of them anyway, and though he never intended to wake Roxas up in the morning, the birds got so loud whenever they saw him that it was impossible to sleep through their enthusiasm.

It took him all of fifteen minutes to go about his morning routine.

The fact that he did just about everything in the course of one shower helped. Ven not being gone on a trip helped too. He was always so energetic and talkative — getting anything done with him around was beyond impossible. It made things go by quicker, sure, and maybe Roxas actually did like his brother’s company, but neither of them were good taskmasters.

He burned away the dirt from yesterday with a jetstream of hot water from the spigot out back, brushed his teeth beneath it, and pulled his clothes on during the walk toward the bird pens. He didn't have his jacket all the way on when he saw his dad waving to him from atop the back of his personal bird, and so he returned the gesture with a tired grunt and what might've been a greeting.

“I'm gonna take that as a good morning,” Prompto said, hopping down off of the bird's back and tethering it to a wood pole not far away.

“Isn't it a bit early to be riding?”

“Aw, don't say that. It's never too early to start the day off right.”

Prompto patted Roxas on the shoulder and stepped by him, advancing toward the larger, more comprehensive pen that held the majority of their riding birds. Roxas watched his father inspect a few of them, pat a few heads, and ruffle a few feathers before turning back to face his child.

“We got an order this morning,” he proudly announced.

“What kind of order?”

“The bird kind, not the gun kind. Some guy in Ravatogh wants a few birds for his stable, and he's heard we've got the best Chocobos around.”

That woke Roxas up a little, and he leaned against the fence that kept the birds in while his father finished explaining.

“Usually, people just wanna buy my guns or drop a bird or two off. Not take 'em off my hands. We're less running a ranch, more running an orphanage.”

Roxas stared, far too tired for anything he was hearing.

“If you sold less guns, you'd probably sell more birds.”

“Yeah, but I like the birds a lot more than I like the guns.”

“You're not supposed to be selling the guns anyway. But, you're not wrong. Our last order was, like, a month ago,” Roxas admitted. “For one bird.”

“Yeah, the winter slowdown can get pretty rough, but… I mean, hey, business is business. Even if I'm not supposed to be selling the guns, they help me take care of these guys! Can you really say it's not worth it?”

“It's not worth it.”

“Hey! Roxas, cut me some slack," Prompto laughed. "You're my son, not a cop.”

“Your best friend's the king. That makes him, like, a supercop.”

Prompto picked out a particularly friendly chocobo and brought it through the pen, to where its soon-to-be stable brother waited. He let them nuzzle a little before climbing aboard, offering it a little tithe in the form of some beak-rubs. He used it as an excuse to change the subject.

“Is Ven home yet?” Roxas inquired.

A shake of the head from Prompto answered him.

“He’s on the way home though. Last I heard, he’s on the way back from Cleigne Probably might have passed by Hammerhead.”

“Aunt Cindy’s place?”

“Yep. I’ll check in with her later to be sure. Can't be too careful with fourteen-year-old kids, can you?”

Roxas approached his bird as she sauntered over to him, nuzzling the side of his head, her beak nudging at him. Like she wanted, he ruffled her feathers, earning a satisfied kweh from her.

As his gaze shifted towards his father once more, he noticed the older man staring above his head, his lips curved into a knowing smile before it flickered to Roxas.

Roxas blinked.

The chocobo eating his hair yawned.

“Hey! My hair isn't food!”

“Marble doesn't seem to agree.”

Roxas swatted at the bird gnawing away at his precious blond locks, ignorant of his father’s terrible laughter. Birds were drawn to them, and like moths to street lamps, tended to follow them around wherever they went. The fact that they often mistook Roxas’s hair for straw was just a benefit of having those big, dog-like doofuses strutting around the ranch.

* * *

With Prompto out on his order, the morning’s chores were left to Roxas. He shepherded the birds, took them on their individual struts, and made sure they were well fed. Grooming took the longest, and by the time he was done cleaning out the stables, it was almost dark. Stars poked through the dark sky like diamonds buried in dirt, glittering through the haze of distant city lights burning on the horizon.

He was about halfway into locking up the last stable stall when he noticed his phone going off in his pocket.

Careful not to let Featherfen go running by him again, Roxas brought his phone out and locked the stall up.

It was a text — or ten — from Hayner. Only the last one stood out.

_Roxas, answer your phone._

Roxas snorted.

 _You’re not the boss of me,_ he sent back.

_I’m literally your boss._

_I’ve never worked for you a day in my life,_ Roxas replied, leaning up against the wood of the stall. Featherfen’s beak dipped dangerously close to his head, and he swatted his feathered friend away preemptively. _What do you want?_

_Olette wants to know if you’ll come eat with us._

Roxas doubted that. _Olette’s the hungry one?_

_I mean, me and Pence were going anyway, but she decided to invite you._

_Right_ , he typed. _You totally haven’t missed me at all. I get it. I guess I’ll just stay home and eat some delicious birdseed._

Hayner’s reply was immediate.

_Ah yes, delicious birdseed. Pence said to quit being an ass and meet us at the diner in thirty minutes, by the way._

Roxas’s didn’t need much thought either.

_Pence didn’t say that._

Roxas was about to stuff his phone back into his pocket when Hayner offered him a final chance to come along.

_You coming or nah?_

Chores were done. His dad wasn’t gonna be back for another few hours, and the diner was only a quarter mile away, so…

Roxas unlocked Featherfen’s stall and gently guided his chosen steed out of the stables. He’d have preferred Marble, who liked him considerably less and wasn’t so anxious, but she was already dead asleep, her head lolled over onto the back of another sleeping bird.

* * *

Roxas got there five minutes before everyone but Pence, who probably showed up to save their booth. A litany of photographs were spread out on the table before him, some brilliantly colored, others more dull. Roxas could just make out flashes of gold in a few, tucked between black stones.

“New shots?” Roxas asked.

“Yeah,” Pence nodded.

As his eyes scanned through the photographs, there was one that caught his attention, that had him teasing Pence within moments.

“New shots of a pretty girl,” he remarked, snark in his tone.

Roxas picked the photo up without hesitation, examining it while Pence chided him.

“Not just any pretty girl,” Pence stated. “I think she’s special.”

“Special how?”

Pence slid him another photograph. It was the same girl, a young blonde in white, framed by two, burly men. One was large and broad, with a swordbreaker on his shoulder. His brown hair was wild and contained in what might’ve been a top-knot… or maybe it just spiked up that way. The other was a little shorter, with blue locks that ran down his shoulders like waterfalls. A massive scar crossed his face, and his black fatigues reeked of nobility.

Roxas’s brow furrowed, flickering between the two guys and the comparatively ghostly girl that led them down an empty sidestreet. He recognized one of them, the one with brown hair: it was one of his brother’s friends.

“You took these?”

“Don’t you dare call me weird,” Pence continued. “There was just something about her. I knew taking a photo would be a good idea.”

“And was it?”

“Oh, it was,” he said. “My dad says I’ve got the best instincts he’s ever seen. And if I’m right, this could be big news.”

He supposed he shouldn't have been surprised. When Vyv Dorden was your father, meeting all sorts of different people was not an issue, especially when travelling was a necessity.

“I didn’t even know you went to the city—”

“You don’t really pay much attention, do ya?”

“Rude.”

“Look, if I’m right, this girl might be...”

“Pence,” came Olette’s voice, earning a flinch from the two of them and a guffaw from the straw-blond behind her. “Why do I feel like you’re halfway into another one of your conspiracy theories?”

Hayner.

“Scared?”

Pence practically shivered.

“Nuh uh! And it’s not a conspiracy theory. I really think this could be the king’s daughter.”

“She doesn’t look like much,” Hayner commented, snatching the photograph from Roxas’s hands. “Her bodyguards look gnarly, though. So I guess I’d believe it.”

“She looks pretty,” Olette said, sliding them both into the other side of the booth.

“Pence,” she started, looking a little wary. “You didn’t weird this girl out, did you?”

“What? No way! I’m not some stalker!”

“Right,” Roxas laughed. “You’re just, like, junior paparazzi.”

“Unless proven otherwise, it still stands. According to my sources in Insomnia,” he lowered his voice. “Nobody actually knows if the King had a boy or a girl. We don’t even know if the royal line is gonna continue. Don’t you think that’s important?”

Roxas glanced at the disapproving look on Olette’s face.

“Doesn’t matter much to me,” Hayner managed, his disregard only thickening the tension. “Boy or girl, king or no queen, what’s it matter?”

“So, guys. What’s up with you?” he asked, shifting the topic before Pence got the brunt of Olette’s disapproval.

“Homework,” she managed, sliding her backpack off of her shoulder and putting it down on the table.

Roxas frowned.

He didn’t want to think about more work after a day of choring. He skipped class more often than he didn’t, though, and he needed to know what they were doing.

“Mythology, right?”

“Unfortunately,” Hayner groaned.

“It’s not that bad, man,” Pence replied, looking disappointed.

“It’s basically history two: even more boring boogaloo,” Hayner shot back.

“That’s not true,” Olette said, her nose wrinkling up. “Some of it’s really interesting!”

“Mmmm, doubt it.”

“You guys ever heard of the fairytale about the land of the eternal sun?” Olette queried, sliding into the empty space next to Roxas while Hayner did the same to Pence.

Roxas didn’t nod — instead, he looked to Pence, who looked totally enthralled.

“Oh yeah, one of the dead cities, right?”

This caught Hayner’s attention.

“So it’s ghosts?”

“No, you — it’s not ghosts,” Roxas scoffed. “Like, Olette — tell him it’s not ghosts.”

“It’s not ghosts,” she frowned.

“Oh, thank Astrals,” Hayner whispered, backing down from the edge of his seat.

Roxas eased a little too, but he wasn’t gonna bring any attention to it. Not when Pence was already laughing at Hayner. Instead, he took comfort in the knowledge that there wasn’t a city full of ghouls waiting for him somewhere in the woods.

“It’s an old ghost town now,” Olette continued. “But it used to be a thriving city… and it disappeared right off the face of the map not too long ago. Scientists are still super confused about it, but you can’t find it with satellite imaging anymore. If you want to see it, you’ve actually got to look for it.”

“Let’s not and say we did,” Roxas muttered.

“There’s more interesting stuff in the woods, anyway,” Hayner dismissed. “All those hunters that’ve gone missing, that’s a real mystery.”

“Huh,” Pence hummed. “Missing hunters? That does sound like a real problem.”

“Way to change the subject, guys,” Olette mumbled, resting her cheek in her hand.

Roxas fiddled with his hands, not really paying much attention. He wasn’t a hunter, like Hayner’s dad, and he wasn’t a snoop like Pence. He shared a look with Olette, who looked equally bored as the two boys launched into their animated discussion on the subject of a hunter’s missing kid.

“Yeah, my dad says it’s a big issue,” Hayner explained. “All these dark creatures and stuff, popping up, snatching people. He’s out by Ravatogh now, checking into a missing persons case.”

Roxas sat up.

“Ravatogh?”

“Yeah.”

“Very helpful, Hayner,” Pence chided. “You could literally hear the question mark in the guy’s voice.”

“What? I answered his question!”

“People have been going missing in Ravatogh?”

“Yeah, like, all this month.”

Roxas leaned back in his seat, fingers fumbling over each other. He glanced down at his hands, then to the black window pane beside them. Pence’s reflection stared back at him, so did Olette’s. He let his eyes linger on hers for a second, glad that she probably couldn’t see him staring while he thought things through.

“Dad took some birds out that way this morning,” Roxas managed. “Said he got an order from Ravatogh.”

It would’ve been just like him to lie about that.

He went off on little missions all the time, either bored by the minutiae of his day or driven to search for something more interesting. They were almost always dangerous affairs. Only now, in hindsight, did Roxas regret not checking the ammunition stores before leaving the house. It usually seemed like such a dull chore — one that he usually didn’t bother to do anyway.

Hayner spoke up first. “What, you think he might be missing?”

“No,” Roxas drawled. “I think he might’ve lied to me about why he was leaving, though.”

How many birds were missing?

“He only took one bird with him,” Roxas realised, cursing himself internally. “If he got an order… who makes an order for just one chocobo? How would he get back if he were actually dropping it off?”

Hayner didn’t really have an answer for that.

“Uh…”

“Well, maybe he’s gonna hitch a ride,” Pence suggested.

“Or maybe he’s just renting the bird out.”

“If he weren’t going to be back by morning, I’m sure he’d have told ya,” Hayner reasoned. “But if you want, we can always go see.”

“What do you mean?”

“My dad went out that way too,” Hayner elaborated.

Roxas waited for him to go on further, not really sure what the connection was.

“He’s got a tracker on him. Like, at all times. In case something happens? We can just follow it and see if your dad’s with my dad.”

“Won’t your dad be pissed if he finds out we went all the way to Ravatogh on a school night?”

“I mean, not as pissed as your dad if he really is just delivering a chocobo to some guy,” Hayner retorted.

Roxas glanced down at the linoleum edge of the tabletop. Hayner was right. Prompto Argentum styled himself many things, but he usually didn’t style himself a liar. Roxas wasn’t sure how he’d take being accused like that. Maybe he’d get mad, maybe he wouldn’t. Wasn’t really a way to tell unless he took the leap.

“I’m not sure how we’d follow your dad’s tracker,” Roxas relented. “None of us can drive.”

“So, that’s, uh, not your bird out there?”

“Well, I mean—”

“We can double up dude.”

Pence interjected with a laugh.

“So we’re, like, chopped liver?”

“Well, Olette doesn’t like birds,” Hayner noted, “and you suck at riding them.”

“They just freak me out,” she blushed. “It’s not that I don’t like them. They don’t like me.”

“Either way, princess over here doesn’t ride ‘em—”

Olette hit him in the arm so hard that someone across the diner turned to look.

“I get your point,” Roxas noted. “We could probably head out that way, and be back before morning. If we hurry.”

“It’s a school night,” Olette reminded them. “You really shouldn’t—”

Roxas and Hayner were halfway out the door before she could even finish her lecture. 

* * *

It didn’t take long to find them.

As soon as the familiar blonde ponytail came into view, lithe frame evident amidst the burly builds of the other hunters, Roxas knew that it was his father.

“Something’s wrong,” Hayner pointed out. Roxas took a good look, noticing the discontent radiating. He kicked his Chocobo lightly in the side, but with enough pressure to inform her to speed up.

“C’mon, girl.”

The boys drew closer; the whispers and the murmurings increased. The frowns and disturbed expressions on their faces etched themselves into his memory. Roxas recognised some of them as fellow customers back at the ranch.

One odd thing he noticed was that whenever they made eye contact with him, expressions of pity would appear instantly appear and they would look away.

He could see his father deep in conversation with Libertus Ostium, Hayner’s dad.

Roxas charged ahead, an iciness burgeoning in his heart.

Prompto turned, his head snapping somewhere to the left of his son’s voice — only to zero in on the two boys a half-second late, face wrought with worry and confusion. His brow furrowed as Roxas half-jogged under the tape to join the hunters in their new circle. A hand flocked to the back of his head and he turned away from the ravine behind him, blocking Roxas from the ledge as he grew close.

The little sprogs of snow that were scattered across the woodland like drifts weren’t good hiding places. Not good enough that he could dive into them to escape Roxas, at any rate, or the serious expression plastered across his face.

“What’re you doing out here?” Roxas asked, fixing his father with a glare.

Prompto fiddled with his gloves. He opened his mouth to speak, chuckled, and then shook his head as if he were about to start all over from the beginning. As if that beginning ever got off the ground in the first place.

“Hey, buddy,” he said, cringing just a little.

“I thought you were off on an order?”

“I mean…”

“This doesn’t look like an order,” Hayner interjected, standing next to Roxas, arms crossed over his chest.

“Right, but there’s, uh, there’s a good reason for that—”

“It was never an order in the first place,” Roxas surmised, peering over the ledge of the ravine at Prompto’s back. “Was it, Dad?”

Prompto flinched.

At the bottom of the ravine was a downed bird.

Ventus’s Chocobo, made distinct from the green feather near the top of its head. His brother’s saddle was mottled over its back, scratches in the leather. Little flecks of blood were splattered over it, like drips off of a macabre brush. Roxas stiffened, and he felt his lips pried apart by surprise. He squinted, then looked to his father for some explanation.

And then, when the silence found him, he couldn’t help but look back to the bird. To the Ven-shaped hole in the snow, the way white powder reduced it to a collection of rocky hills.

He inhaled, and for just one second, it felt like he would never be able to exhale again.

The world around him suddenly felt so uneasy that he reached for Hayner’s shoulder. The other boy turned to study him, brown eyes trailing toward the bottom of the ditch. It was a fifty foot drop at least, to the spot where a collection of craggy rocks poked out of the white like blunt spikes.

In pieces, Roxas’s world fell into a storm of static. Whirlpools of sensation came to him from all angles, maybe words, maybe something else — sounds that he couldn’t hear and sentiments he didn’t want to. He tried to speak and stumbled, looking again for his father and the possibility that everything was still okay and that he hadn’t just stumbled blindly onto his brother’s last resting place.

“It’s not what it looks like,” Prompto managed.

Roxas stepped toward the ledge.

Hayner tugged him back by the shoulder, and Roxas relented, ripping himself away with a quick jerk.

“What’s it look like, then?”

“Roxas, calm down,” Hayner managed.

“What do you mean calm down? Dad, what am I looking at?”

“It’s just a bird—”

“It’s my brother’s bird,” Roxas shot back.

“This is why I didn’t bring you,” Prompto replied, voice low. “I didn’t want you to freak out. All this means is that there’s been an accident.”

“An accident involving my brother, his chocobo, and a deep ravine.”

Roxas sounded so bitter that Prompto shivered. Even Hayner shied away, and Libertus shepherded him away from the Argentums with a concerned expression. It wasn’t their place to be there. Even numbed by the static, Roxas agreed with that. He didn’t offer his friend so much as a look of farewell.

“Is this the part where you lie to me again?”

“Roxas—”

“No, it’s okay,” Roxas replied, “I get that.”

There was a pause, and Roxas brought a hand to his brow.

“It’s what you did with Mom,” he finished.

The mild downturn of his father’s lips confirmed it, but it was gone in a split second.

“Roxas, your brother’s going to be okay,” he concluded. “You’re going to worry yourself to death, if you keep thinking otherwise.”

“I don’t even know how you can say that.”

“There’s no body.”

Roxas bit back a response.

“No body means there’s a chance he’s still alive,” Prompto reaffirmed, allowing that single statement to sink into Roxas’s mind.

The youngest Argentum finally exhaled, purging himself of every breath he’d ever taken all at once. There were no tears, just the faint tingling of smoke burning in his lungs, and the notion that all the world had been reduced to a ravine. There were no words to convey the thoughts he wanted to convey, no place for the wrath. Prompto Argentum was a good father.

A good father, a widower, and a griever, but a good father nonetheless.

Roxas ran a hand through his hair and turned, removing the gloves that shielded his fingers from the elements. Some of the hunters were already filtering out by then, determined to give father and son the space they needed. Part of that left him even more bereft. As if they knew how hopeless the situation was, and as if they didn’t want to be apart of the way it all broke.

“Buddy, things like this happen all the time. He’s probably a town over, waiting in a diner to get some cell service,” Prompto explained.

“He can’t be all that far off from here,” he continued. “He’s always been a wanderer. Probably just trailed off, snow covered the tracks.”

Roxas didn’t react.

Prompto put a hand on his shoulder, brought the knobs of his knuckles to his son’s cheek, and then gave him a playful backhand.

“Cheer up. No use looking glum just because the chips are down. There are worse things. Your brother had a bit of a tumble and a little fall. He’s alright.”

“I still don’t know how you can think that, given—”

Prompto’s face flickered.

“Don’t be dumb,” he said. “You know your brother. He’s fallen out of trees way higher up than this ravine.”

Roxas flinched a little at the realization that his father was right. It wasn’t like they were made out of paper. He and Ven never were the most fragile boys; long falls, tumbles from trees, hard kicks from frustrated birds… it all amounted to little more than a scrape or a bruise or a few claw marks.

That realization left him feeling a little less overwhelmed, but it didn’t answer any of the questions pressed into his brain like newspaper print.

His hands flocked to the sides of his arms and he turned back to the ravine, now far less numb to the evidence gathered in the snow for him. There wasn’t much blood, barring the bird’s. None of it made sense to be Ven’s, not from the placement. There was a lot of hubbub on the slope leading down to the bottom, but there were no tracks following Ven down. Nor were there any leading away.

If something carried Ven off after his now unlikely death, there was no evidence of it. No trail left behind, no obvious footprints.

“I just don’t understand,” Roxas whispered. “He’s not a bad rider. How did he even fall in the first place?”

“Something must’ve spooked his bird,” Prompto replied. “So he fell, walked off on his own.”

“In this weather?”

“He and Terra go hiking all the time.”

His father’s calm finally killed off the last of the wrathful storm brewing in his chest. Something about the way he navigated such stormy waters, such dire straits, brought Roxas a degree of strange certainty. If Prompto Argentum, gunsmith, former crownsguard, and hunter extraordinaire wasn’t worried… well, maybe he could afford the situation a little bit of optimism.

Something about that just didn’t feel right, though. None of the math was adding up. Ven wasn’t a bad rider, the weather wasn’t enough to unsteady him. Maybe his dad was right. Something must’ve spooked his bird and sent it cascading down the hill. Roxas knelt at the ravine’s edge, lips pursed, breath bated.

Part of him wanted to apologize for his anger.

As if he weren’t allowed to feel that after how hard they all grieved for his mother.

As if his dad being right this one time made up for the last time he wasn’t.

Roxas stood and turned.

“Whatever.”

Prompto didn’t ease up any, but he brought his hand down on Roxas’s shoulder in an attempt to reassure him. He wasn’t sure it would work, but… then again, not much could really calm him down when he really got into a mood. Even he knew that.

“Look, I’m sorry for lying to you—”

“You shouldn’t have done it,” Roxas said, shooting his father down.

He ran a hand over his own cheek and tugged at the collar of his jacket. The cold wasn’t too bad, but he couldn’t afford to look his dad in the eyes. Not six seconds after he almost gave up hope, not six minutes after, not six hours later either. He left Prompto to go over the scene, joining Hayner and his father near the birds the two of them rode in on.

It was strange watching his dad work from afar, stranger feeling like there was no point to looking. Hours passed in the bitter snow, hunters came and went. Blurry bodies filtered in and out, offering condolences to a sunshine man and his straw-built survivor of a son. Roxas didn’t feel any of their words, and he didn’t pay them much mind until he took the birds back just before the break of morning.


	2. His To Hold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Old men always think they know better. Sometimes they do. That doesn't make Roxas any more eager to admit it.

Every day after Ventus’s disappearance was another flake of falling snow: time sank by outside the ranch windows in slow motion, without a care in the world, blissfully unaware of the tragedy it couldn’t touch.

No heater could fill the crevices, hollowed out by his brother’s vanishing act.

Roxas kept that in mind while he lounged on the couch, trying to drown his sorrows in unsatisfying television and dour news reports. Sea levels were rising, light pollution was at an all time high, and more travelers were going missing on the roads at night. None of those things were pleasing to his ear, and he flipped idly through the channels in the hopes that it’d all turn to static.

There was no news of Ventus’s disappearance on the TV. Nobody really knew he was gone, except for the hunters and the grieving. Still, it felt like the world knew, somehow, like it should have known. The chirps of the Chocobos outside were more muted than usual, tinged with forlorn longing.

Roxas understood their pain. Losing a bird was like losing a brother. Losing a brother felt like losing an arm.

At least he stood a chance to get his back.

Ventus was still alive out there. As long as there was no body, that one percent chance still existed. His father’s enthusiasm had faded a little, and he wasn’t humming in the mornings anymore, but Roxas got that. When he finally turned the television off, he watched his dad go about doing the dishes in its reflection, stopping every so often to breathe deep.

It was strange to think of how hard his father was hiding his grief. As if Roxas couldn’t tell that they both hurt, or as if he needed to. Part of him felt like that was another betrayal; another part of him knew that he was just trying his best.

Roxas zoned out staring into the television’s surface. Prompto left the counter, moved out of sight, and resumed his chores. By the time everything came back into focus, Prompto was back in view, turning something over in his hands. A glint of color rebounded off the screen, and Roxas sat up.

“Dad,” he said, brow furrowed.

“Yes?”

“What’ve you got?”

“What, this star thing?” Prompto asked, dangling a star-shaped charm in front of his face. Light reflected off of its green surface, but it died in Roxas’s eyes.

“It’s Ven’s,” he stated, frowning. “He never takes it off though... it must have slipped off. Where’d you find it?”

“At the scene,” Prompto replied. “There was no sign of a fight or anything, so I figured it must’ve fallen off him. He always liked things like this, so...”

“It’s totally undamaged?”

Prompto handed it over.

Upon closer inspection, a single touch was enough to tell him that it was made out of a glass of some sort, but how could it not show a single scratch? Marble was dead enough that there should’ve been some form of collateral. Roxas fiddled with his brother’s little wayfinder, turning it over in his hands every so often to check for scratches in the glass.

Was snow soft enough to keep it from shattering? Water felt like concrete after a hundred feet. A ravine wasn’t much different at eighty, especially with so many rocks poking out from the powder in its belly.

“Weird,” Roxas muttered.

“I was going to keep it, maybe put it up on the porch or something.” “Yeah, maybe that’s a good idea...”

“Or, uh, you could hold onto it,” Prompto said, leaning up against the back of the couch. “That way you can give it to him when he gets back. Earn some brownie points or something. I’m sure he’ll take out the trash if you tell him you kept it safe.”

“He’d probably get mad I took it,” Roxas muttered.

“I dunno. Aqua gave it to him, right?”

“The one he’s got that massive thing for?”

“He swears it’s not a crush. Swears it on my life.”

“He also swears he doesn’t suck his thumb in his sleep.” A knock on the front door stole their attention away. Prompto patted his son’s shoulder and sashayed toward the porch, stepping out into the cold sunlight with hardly a word to the hunter he was probably entertaining. The vermillion-coloured star in Roxas’s hand shimmered, heavy and cool in his hand.

While Roxas fiddled with Ven’s wayfinder, he tried to piece together how it could’ve survived the fall. Ven carried the thing with him everywhere. If it came loose during the slide down the ravine’s side, that made sense... but he didn’t really have the details on hand. He couldn’t picture it just falling out.

Footsteps on the inside of the house led him to tuck the wayfinder in his back pocket.

The man that followed behind his father was not quite tall, with a peppery beard and long, raven hair done up in a ponytail. His shoulders were broad, and his hands calloused. He wore long, white robes, what might’ve been the most modest male skirt Roxas ever saw, and a pair of black sandals that matched his black shirt.

“You must be Roxas,” the raven-haired man remarked, his expression flickering between recognition and possibly indifference. “Ventus spoke highly of you.”

His eyes returned to Prompto.

“I assume his mother isn’t home?”

The air grew heavy for a split second.

“She hasn’t been around for a while,” Prompto finally responded, reaching out to place a hand on Roxas’s shoulder. The grip was firm, but he could feel the subtle shudders chorusing through his father as his wife was brought up. He squeezed down, then led the way to the kitchen. Roxas watched them walk, peering around the edge of the couch and craning his neck to follow every step.

Eraqus stared at him grimly.

“Ah, that’s unfortunate,” he muttered, clearly taken aback. “I was hoping to speak to you both, about your son...”

Both father and son sucked in a breath.

“Forgive me. Perhaps an introduction is in order.”

“Might be a good idea,” Prompto agreed. “You said you know Ven?”

“I do.”

“Are you one of his teachers?”

“In a sense,” the pepper-gray man nodded. “I’m his master.”

“His master?”

“Master Eraqus, of the Land of Departure. I may have a way to find that lost son of yours.”

* * *

The lights flickered on as Roxas pulled the doors down behind them, triggering the power. At once, the sounds of nature outside faded away, replaced by the hum of a generator and the solemn silence of thick steel.

Disguised as an average basement under the ranch, Argentum Artillery housed arms both ancient and sterling. Some weapons were in good shape. Others waited to be serviced. Everything that lined the walls was lethal in the right hands, fatal in the wrong ones. Roxas kept his eyes trained on Eraqus’s broad back as Prompto led the way into the basement.

“Make yourself comfortable,” he said, “we’re in the dark down here.”

The scent of sterile metal burned sour in Roxas’s nose as he stepped by Eraqus to take a seat on the far left of the room, where a single table separated the weapon room from the shooting range. Three, lonely targets waited about fifty yards out, their chests filled with holes. Prompto, on the other side of the room, kneeled behind the counter, emerging with what looked like a can of half-and-half for their guest.

Eraqus didn’t take it. Prompto tossed it to Roxas.

“This is certainly an unexpected sight,” Eraqus began, standing while Prompto took a seat on the stool behind his makeshift ledger.

“You sure you know my son?”

“He was a quick learner in our combat drills,” the old man admitted. “That’s no reason to assume his father runs a...?”

“Dispensary,” Prompto said.

“A dispensary. And this is all above board?”

“Buddy, don’t you know how basements work?”

Roxas rolled his eyes at his father’s joke.

“Ven. We’re here to talk about Ven.”

Eraqus nodded, glad that Roxas could bring them back on track.

“I mentioned that I may have a way to find your son,” he began. “One that may prove useful to you.”

“What is it?”

“Ventus was always quick to form bonds. Two of his friends created a method to keep in touch, and to find each other when the dark grew too great to bear.”

Roxas frowned. “Can you quit talking like you’re the bad guy in a fairy tale?”

Prompto shot him a look, but he didn’t disagree.

“I think he wants you to get to the point.”

“I have reason to believe that Ventus is being hunted down by those who seek to snuff out the light. I believe you’ve heard the recent reports,” Eraqus continued, his gaze lingering on Roxas for an unnaturally long second. “Of travelers going missing on the road, and of shadowy monsters once again walking among us.” Prompto’s brow furrowed at that. For the first time, he leaned forward, resting an elbow on the countertop. His fingers drummed around the edges of his drink can, beating a strange rhythm.

“You think Ven was taken by daemons?”

“At first, I thought he may have just come home... after all, the stars led here.”

“Stars? You mean this thing?” Roxas held up Ventus’s glass trinket. “It’s called a wayfinder.” 

Eraqus nodded. 

“The light that Ventus has is strong. The ‘wayfinders’ the children set up rely on that light; a strong enough presence can be channeled through it, intentionally or not, and the others will align to point toward it.”

“Like a compass,” Prompto replied. “So that’s how you found us.”

“Correct, though I wasn’t hoping to find you. I was hoping to find Ventus.”

Roxas, across the room, didn’t look very happy. He glanced down at the little charm in his hands, then back up at Eraqus.

“That doesn’t track. How’d you find us if Ventus is what makes this thing work?”

“There’s light in all of us,” Eraqus responded. “Sometimes great, sometimes small. Due to your... unique physiology, it would appear that your light is great enough to power the device.”

Prompto visibly stiffened, but Roxas has more important things to worry about.

“Ven never said anything about light,” Prompto interjected, just as Roxas was about to open his mouth. “Or a magic GPS.”

“I requested for him, as well as the other two, not to mention anything. The light’s power is something often sought. Ventus was protecting the both of you.” Roxas scoffed.

“Ven couldn’t protect a bowl of cereal, much less either of us. He’s a cinnamon roll in people clothes.”

“I assure you, it’s the truth,” Eraqus replied.

“No it’s not,” Roxas shot back. “You’re just a hawk. You heard about a missing kid and thought you’d throw yourself at the family to see what shook out.”

“Roxas,” Prompto cut in. He held a hand up.

“And what’s this about us having a ‘unique physiology,’ and all this light or whatever? Are you trying to sell us on a grief cult?”

“I assure you that isn’t the case.”

“I think Roxas wants some proof,” Prompto said. “Something to show us you aren’t just telling us something you think we want to hear.”

“Do you want to hear that your son may have been taken by the darkness?”

“I do not.”

“Then what proof do you require?”

Prompto looked over to Roxas, who was staring daggers in the side of Eraqus’s face. The old man didn’t look very perturbed, but in the dusty, cellar-light, nobody looked very happy either. For a long second, nobody said anything.

“This light you keep talking about,” Roxas started. “Is it magic?”

“Like elemancy?” Prompto asked.

“Not quite,” Eraqus answered. “It’s a more direct, tangible power. You don’t need to be royalty to wield the light. You just need a strong heart.”

Roxas didn’t say anything. Eraqus took that as his sign to continue.

“Light resides in us all, and we can make use of it in order to beat back the darkness — the very same darkness that has claimed the life of travelers on the road. At first, I thought your brother may have come home without telling me. He does often grow homesick, when he visits... but now, I’ve come to suspect the darkness may have claimed him.”

“When does he visit you?” Prompto frowned.

“He, Terra, and Aqua visit me often.”

Both blonds swore.

“I thought he was hiking,” Prompto muttered. “He always took that backpack. And you said you’re his master? What are you a master of?”

“I am the master of the Land of Departure. I instruct others in how to wield the light within themselves, so that they may summon a weapon capable of beating back the darkness.”

“I need something more specific than that. What’re you talking about when you talk about light?”

Eraqus inhaled sharply, and nodded, as if he’d expected that much. His arms folded behind his back, and he strolled the cellar, inspecting the various firearms that lined its walls. He ran a finger along the barrel of a rifle, tapped the grip of a pistol, and finally came to rest beneath what looked to be a large grenade launcher. Roxas shot his father a look for keeping one in the first place. Prompto just shrugged.

“The ‘light’ is a magical force,” he explained. “Think of it as... power, held within the human body. By harnessing your light, you can call upon a weapon to aid you in battle against the darkness.”

“A weapon?”

“A keyblade.”

“And the darkness, they’re... what, daemons?”

“Incorrect.”

“So these aren't daemons?” Prompto asked once again. “What makes them so different?”

“The creatures you know as daemons were the results of an experiment gone wrong from years ago. Not only that, it was determined that it was a curse brought upon this land by the Astrals, seeking to reap the Starscourge by reaping life itself with the hopes to reset it. The Heartless, however, are the shadows in man’s heart, manifested into a single creature. They’re similar problems, at their root, but independent of each other.”

There was a pause while Eraqus continued, turning back to face them while he rubbed dust off his sleeve.

“Ventus, Terra and Aqua all had these lights that outshone the darkness. They could easily resist them,” Eraqus summarized. “This is not a common power to hold, which is why the shadows outweigh the light. Thus, they hunt the light, because they are stronger in numbers.”

When he noticed the looks on their faces, incredulous, Eraqus brought things back to the present.

“Your brother has the purest light I’ve ever seen in a living being. I suspect it is because of the two... no, three of you: Prompto, Roxas, Lysandra. The bonds he’s formed with you — and with others — has given him a potential beyond measure. Even my strongest pupil doesn’t hold a candle in the face of that purity.”

“You’re calling my son a golden retriever,” Prompto concluded. “But that doesn’t explain how we’re going to find him. You said you had an idea.”

For the first time, Roxas saw Eraqus crack a smile. It sounded like they were coming to a head, but Eraqus still hadn’t explained how they were going to find Ventus. If Roxas had the thing meant to track him, it didn’t make any sense that they would be able to find him. Roxas glanced over to his father, still confused, and watched the older blond rest his arms on the counter.

Despite the fact that the old man was suddenly on the hook for the answers they needed. Ventus was still out there, missing now for four days or more. Without some way to track him down, they were going to lose his trail. To Roxas, it all sounded insane anyway — as if there were really monsters like that, made of darkness, or light in human beings.

“I can show your other boy how to find him. The light in him will call to his brother. If he masters his power, he may be able to track him down.”

Roxas scoffed. “And there are, what, no downsides to that whatsoever?”

“There are grave consequences to calling out the light within your own heart,” Eraqus admitted. “Your brother knew them. He now faces them.”

“So this is your fault.”

“This is no one’s fault,” Prompto interjected. “But I see what he’s saying. I’m not hanging one son out to dry to save the other.”

“I don’t need your help saving him anyway,” Roxas continued. “I don’t need some hokey superpower. You’re sitting in an armory. If something took him, we’ll get him back. It’s that simple.”

“Would you like to test that theory?”

Prompto’s brow furrowed, and he looked at Eraqus.

“What exactly are you suggesting?”

“I can show you the power of the keyblade, if you’re willing to face it.”

Eraqus extended his hand. At once, a shower of sparks rained down the length of his right arm, culminating in a flash at the ends of his fingers. A black, wrought-iron blade forged itself from that light, its guard silver. Its teeth were the color of burnt ash, and curved together into sharp, checkered squares. It looked like it belonged on a chessboard, but even from across the room, Roxas could feel something in it.

It felt like a hum, one that resonated in his heart to produce a dull, throbbing ache. He reached for his chest while Prompto squinted over at the blade, not noticing the reaction. When Eraqus’s eyes sauntered over to him, Roxas’s hands were on the side of his face and his elbows rested against his knees.

His keyblade was eloquent looking and impressive, in a sense, but it didn’t have any noticeable lethality. There were no points, and it making a good club didn’t leave it as useful as a firearm.

“I’m not sure what the point of showing us that is,” Roxas muttered. “You can show us a magic trick. Big whoop.”

“This weapon is no parlor trick,” Eraqus attested. “It’s sharper than any real steel, and twice as deadly. It also allows me the use of magic... what your father called elemancy.”

“So you have the same power as the king,” Prompto frowned. “The power of the Astrals?”

“No. The source is, as I’ve mentioned, my own power. This strength does not make me as powerful as King Noctis, or as fearsome.”

“A geezer that knows his limits,” Roxas grumbled. “Cool.” “This power is also yours to wield, you know.”

“I haven’t seen power. Just an old guy and his oversized key.”

“Buddy, be nice,” Prompto shot back. “Let him finish. Otherwise we’re not gonna get anywhere.”

Eraqus approached Roxas, and extended his keyblade. Sparks shimmered up its black shaft and conflagrated against its pommel. Spark by spark, a bed of fireflies ate away the iron of Eraqus’s blade, reducing it to wood. What remained was a clumsy looking weapon with three teeth, its guard a simple square.

“What, this is for me?”

“If you’ll take it.”

Roxas rolled his eyes, but he reached out for it. When he took the weapon, he felt no different. At least, not immediately. Still, he couldn’t deny the way his heart hummed in response to holding it. It was like holding the key filled him with a simple sort of hope... one that only made his conviction stronger. He didn’t need Eraqus to find his brother. Nor did he need anyone’s help.

Standing, Roxas gave the weapon a test swing.

It was unexpectedly heavy in his right hand, but light in his left. Little flecks of light trailed at the end of each strike, dancing away from the path of his blows like little lightning bugs on their way to the stars. When he’d had enough, he turned to look at his father, who didn’t seem to know what to say. “Well?” He asked.

“It feels like a hunk of wood,” Roxas replied.

“Uh-huh... well, Eraqus, you say this can help us find Ventus?”

“If the boy will accept my training and master his powers, yes,” he said.

“And what about your other students?”

“He would be training alongside them, as well.”

“I haven’t even met them,” Roxas laughed. “I’m not going anywhere. Not with you. Not until I find Ven.”

“You won’t find your brother unless you do,” Eraqus admitted, voice tinged with disappointment. “Your light is strong... but I see that you require further proof of the burden being placed upon your shoulders.”

Prompto tensed up at this. 

“What sort of proof are we talking about, exactly? I’m not going to let you do anything to endanger my son.”

“There is no danger here. Not until he manifests a real keyblade... which he will do, whether or not I provide him guidance. Tomorrow, I will return here with another student of mine... and I will show you the power he has granted himself.”

“What’ll that do?”

“It’ll prove to your son how weak he truly is,” Eraqus concluded.

“Right, totally not a cartoon supervillain,” Roxas muttered.

“And how strong he stands to be if he accepts the truth. The light will spread, if you’re present enough to open the door for it. By tomorrow morning, the light in you will start to flourish. Things will be visible to you that weren’t before, and your understanding will grow.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“If it doesn’t, young man, you’ll find larger issues than a doddering old man and his strange gifts.”

* * *

Roxas held onto the key after Prompto showed him the way out. When his dad came back, he was turning it over in his hands and switching between different grips in an attempt to understand it. The weight differential from hand to hand was strange, but the weirdest part was still the sensation holding it gave him.

He glanced up from it to see Prompto leaning in the doorway. His messy hair was done up in a bun, and the stubble on his face finally betrayed his genuine seriousness. He looked introspective, but Roxas didn't realize why until he cleared his throat.

“That guy was crazy,” Roxas protested, dismissing his dad's gaze with a wave. “It's not rude if they're crazy.”

“Him being a lunatic doesn't make him wrong.”

“But you admit he's a lunatic?”

“I'm not admitting anything. I've heard stranger stories.”

Roxas rolled his eyes. He knew what he said next was a low blow. “From who? Your pal, the King?”

“Roxas,” Prompto warned. “You can't just jump at every sore spot you see. Anger isn't a good look on you. I get that you're mad. I am too... but we're being offered a chance here.”

“We don't need this guy's help. We can find him ourselves. I don't know why we aren't looking right now.”

Roxas fiddled with the wooden key, drumming new rhythms into its grip. The anger brewing in him couldn't just evaporate. It wasn't desert rain, it was a jungle downpour. No matter how he looked at it, they were better off without Eraqus and his “help.”

The tricky part was convincing his father of that without getting looked at as the bad guy. Prompto Argentum was the world's foremost optimist. Even after their mother's death, he hadn't skipped a beat. He just kept on puttering like nothing ever happened, like he knew how to cook for two boys before he had to.

If it were up to him, Roxas knew they'd be waiting forever.

“Roxas, all I'm saying is that this guy might know more than we do.”

“About our family?”

“About what took Ven. You can't hunt something if you don't know what it is... how it moves, how it works.”

“Oh, you so you believe in his shadow monster theory? In Heartless?”

Prompto inhaled.

“I believe in magic. I believe that better men wind up in dark places. I've seen things you haven't seen. It makes sense to me that something like Heartless can exist.”

Roxas snorted and rose to his feet. “So you're gonna, what, throw your other son away then?”

“Roxas.”

“You're gonna give up on the both of us?”

“You're being a real dick,” Prompto answered. “I want you to be able to protect yourself.”

“We live in an armory. Don't act like these guns are for show.”

“One gun isn't going to work against a daemon, Roxas. You don't know what monsters are capable of. You haven't seen them.”

Roxas frowned and watched his father grab a rag from underneath the countertop. The whole place was covered in grime or grease, but that didn’t stop him from focusing only on the door. He wiped down the knob, poorly, and gestured for Roxas to follow him up the steps that led out onto the ranch.

The sun hung low in the sky by the time they stepped out onto the grass, and its dimming light bled pink into the sky around it. Gold clouds were laid low beneath its glow, and wavering over the forest green, speckled-white horizon, they stretched on for miles. In the twilight, the world looked so soft that Roxas couldn’t help but find it unfair.

“I’m just saying that we don’t need his help.”

“And I’m just saying we won’t know until we see what that key he gave you can really do. I don’t think there’s a point in just jumping to conclusions. If there’s a way to get Ven back now, just by hearing an old man out, I’ll do it.”

Prompto turned back to the cellar door and slammed it shut, bolting the lock without another word. He wasn’t technically supposed to be selling guns out of his basement. Then again, technically was a word he’d come to love. Roxas knew that from all the times he’d “technically” put them to bed at the right time as kids, ignoring the light poking out from under their door at night.

It wasn’t until his father stood that Roxas noticed the sag in his shoulders or the bags under his eyes. Prompto Argentum, typically so picture perfect, finally looked every bit like the raggedy man Roxas hoped he would be. For the first time, Roxas felt a little bitter about that wish — bitter at himself for having it, ashamed to think that his father didn’t care.

“Whatever,” he muttered. “We can hear the guy out, but I don’t think it’s going to help. Having a key doesn’t make me a bloodhound.”

“But it does let you use magic. Not everyone can— not everyone gets a chance like that.”

“Ven did.”

It was Prompto’s turn to frown.

“I’m not mad at you,” Roxas admitted. “I’m just... why didn’t he tell us about any of this?”

“He only told me that he was going to hang out with friends,” Prompto managed, slinging his greasy rag over his shoulder and wiping rust off his fingers with the front of his sweater. “Maybe he didn’t want us to get hurt.”

The weird part was that Roxas didn’t doubt for a second that Ventus could really have been some kind of spy. Or soldier. Or whatever he was. He was always trying to do the right thing, and sometimes, maybe that meant keeping a secret or two... but he didn’t see the point in it. Roxas crossed his arms over his chest and huffed.

“I wish he’d have told us. We could’ve helped.”

“Well, now we get the chance to. If we’re willing to take it.”

“Do you think that guy’s really coming back?”

“He said he will,” Prompto reasoned. “I don’t know how he expects to show you anything, though. You’re probably the most stubborn kid I’ve ever met.”

Roxas snorted at that.

“Right. Like you weren’t the same way.”

“What? Me? I was way more like your brother. Less of a dick. Probably.”

“You know I’m your son, right?”

Prompto’s laugh was long and hardy, as was the way he clapped Roxas on the shoulder to shepherd them both back to the house.

“My son? A dick? It’s more likely than you’d think. More news on that after dinner. Let’s get a move on.”

Together, they marched through the snow, leaving the seriousness of the last hour and a half behind them.


	3. Start A Fire In His Soul

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Terra and Eraqus show Roxas what it means to be more than him.

“Eraqus is crazy,” Roxas decided, adamant in his conclusion.

“Weren’t you the one who said I wasn’t taking any of this seriously?”

“You believe a stranger over your son. That’s not taking anything seriously.”

“I believe in taking opportunities when we can,” Prompto reasoned. “Especially since we don’t have a lot of options available to us, Roxas. A chance is better than no chance at all.”

Roxas opened his mouth to argue further, but snapped shut. His father was right, even if he didn’t like that. If Prompto felt the intensity of his son’s glare, he did not show it as he knelt down to his son’s level.

“We’re bringing him home, Roxas, no matter the cost.”

Roxas let the silence fester until a knock on the door led them to break apart. Two days went by since Eraqus first promised to come back, which made him late. Roxas counted that as a point against him.

“Coming!”

Prompto let his gaze linger a little longer than usual, before pulling away from Roxas as he remained where he stood, arms folded across his chest.

Instead of inviting them in, what remained of the Argentum family greeted their guests on the porch. Eraqus looked exactly the same as he had two days prior; his hair was a disheveled mess of pepper gray, done up in a topknot that rested over the crest of his crown like a bun on top of a rice hill. His robes were still white, covered in what might’ve been dust or dirt or any other mundane debris. He looked a lot like a homeless man trying to pass as a priest.

The man beside him was more familiar and less offensive.

Terra was the spitting image of his father. His broad shoulders and tree-trunk arms were testaments to years of harsh training, and his brown hair, though done in the same style as Eraqus’s, was wild in a more natural way. He carried no weapon, but a massive swordbreaker burgeoned down the length of his arm, threatening to shatter any blade that dared strike him. He looked intimidating, like a prospective member of the Kingsguard was supposed to, and for the first time Roxas found an inkling of truth in Eraqus’s boasts.

“Roxas,” Terra greeted him with far too much steel in his eyes. “Good to see you.”

“Terra. I didn’t think Eraqus was going to bring you.”

“Neither did I.”

“You know where Ven is?”

“I don’t. Didn’t know he hadn’t made it home. Sorry we couldn’t do anything earlier,” he managed, his voice dropping to a hushed whisper meant for Roxas’s ears alone.

His words were far from soothing. Roxas inhaled, fingers drumming against his thigh.

“So, a gigantic key is going to help me find my brother,” Roxas deadpanned, unable to resist any longer. If it was just Terra, there was no need for formalities. They were familiar with each other. He didn’t know him as well as he knew Aqua, but Ven didn’t ramble about Terra for hours on end.

Roxas’s eyes flickered to the sash around Terra’s waist, where a glint of orange buried itself against the otherwise earth-tone cloth of his hakama. It looked so familiar that Roxas couldn’t help but to draw Ventus’s matching, lime-green wayfinder from its place in his pocket. Terra frowned, fingers moving to cover the one he kept with him.

“Master has a way to find your brother back.”

“So he says,” Roxas finished. “You really believe that old quack?”

“Give him a chance. You haven’t seen the things I’ve seen.”

Roxas rolled his eyes.

“You’re just like my old man—”

Terra’s fists clenched at his sides.

“I want to find your brother. It sounds like you don’t. Maybe I misunderstood that.”

“Boys,” Prompto whistled, levying a hand for both of their shoulders. Even his usual cheer felt depleted, hollow. “Let’s get to the reason we’re all here, right? Eraqus said he’s got proof that all this stuff he’s saying is true. Terra, you’re that proof, aren’t you?”

Terra leveled his eyes on Prompto, then looked back down to Roxas.

“I am.”

“Then let’s see it. Do you have it with you?”

Roxas watched Terra trade a look with his master, then gesture toward an empty pasture off by the farm house. No birds roamed its confines, and it hadn’t been used in a few months. It was exactly the sort of wide open space that a spectacular demonstration would’ve needed. Somehow, that didn’t leave Roxas any more optimistic about whatever evidence they were supposed to have with them.

“Over there,” Terra said. “I’ll show you.”

* * *

“This is the power you need in order to find your brother,” Eraqus explained, stretching out a hand; Terra did the same. Two jets of light jittered down the length of their arm, chased by an afterburner of sparks that died in the air before they could touch the ground. In their place, two, metallic keys materialized in their grip, shimmering in the light.

Roxas took note of how different each was, as though it were meant to reflect them as a person.

Terra’s was massive, black, lined with gold. Its guard was an electric blue, and its teeth were blunted. It looked like a club, ready to bludgeon any objection into submission. Eraqus’s was thin, black-shafted with a silver guard. Its teeth were squared, sharp, and perfect for catching incoming blows that might’ve slid up its shaft to catch its owner in the neck. Eraqus turned his over in his grip, examining it carefully.

“Only those worthy of wielding the Keyblade are able to use its power. They are weapons of light, made to combat the darkness in us all,” Eraqus began.

“Each one is unique.” Terra explained. “A manifestation of your heart’s desire, and a special kind of light.”

Roxas mumbled something under his breath, only to be silenced by a light smack on the back of his head. The next thing he knew, the familiar sensation of cold steel was shoved into his hands.

It was his father’s old gun, recognisable by its sharp, Insomnian make.

“Your job is to prove that you can handle Terra,” Eraqus explained. “If you cannot defeat him, you cannot possibly hope to tackle the darkness that may have taken your brother.”

Terra balked at that, but voiced no objection while Eraqus lifted his off-hand. A thin sheath of light burst free of his fingertips, and a simple, wooden key materialized in his hand. Roxas glared at it with utter disdain.

“It was your brother’s.”

Roxas’ expression flickered with hurt for a brief moment before grudgingly accepting it, his hatred muted.

“With any luck, his light will be the spark you need to ignite your own power.”

* * *

Terra and Roxas took their positions on opposite sides of the Chocobo pen. Green grass split the difference between them while Roxas checked his clip — filled with rubber bullets at his father’s insistence. Terra might’ve thought that he could tank a real bullet, but Prompto wasn’t going to take the chance that he couldn’t. They were both dressed light, absent any armor, but Terra was weighted to the ground on the other side of the pasture like an anchor.

The keybearer’s heavy boots were rooted in place before the fence and the massive, gold and black key at his side looked like an axe in comparison to the little black pistol in Roxas’s right hand. Roxas was a lot smaller than Terra, probably a lot speedier, and since they were both starting a good thirty feet apart, he figured that gave him an advantage.

He didn’t need some stupid key to win a fight.

It was still looped into the little strap that ran across his back, but that didn’t mean he needed to use it. Ever since getting it, he hadn’t felt any different. There was no magical power in him, and there was no need for some mystical magic weapon when he had hard lead and three different elemancy switches built into his pistol grip.

Still, Terra’s stillness unnerved him. It was either a surplus of confidence or a drastic underestimation of Roxas’s ability to fire a gun. Either one was a recipe for disaster, no matter how sturdy Terra thought he was.

Eraqus lifted a hand from the center of the fence’s opposite side. He spared a glance at Terra, Roxas, then barked his command.

“Begin.”

Roxas lifted his pistol up and rattled two shots off, the rapport shaking down the length of his arm like thunder blooming through clear sky. He fired off a third for good measure, bracing his shooting arm over his left forearm, and kept his eyes trained firmly on Terra.

The first bullet slammed into his shoulder.

The second hit him square in the chest.

He deigned to dodge the third, stepping hard left with such speed that Roxas’s eyes widened the instant he noticed. With the recoil still rattling up his arm, Roxas fired off two more shots and stepped back toward the fence.

Terra slapped them both away with a quick flick of his massive key and advanced with a commanding strut. Roxas frowned, flicked his first elemancy switch, and pulled the trigger with prejudice.

A bolt of crackling lightning blossomed from the barrel of his pistol as if it were thrown by Ramuh himself. Terra lifted his left hand and caught it, dissipating the entire blast without so much as a grunt. Roxas balked, his barrel lowering just a touch in shock.

“What?”

He led with another, then hit the second switch.

Terra lifted his key to defend against the second lightning bolt and brought it to bear with a heavy slap that dissolved it into a sea of sparks that swirled around his body like a crown. The next shot sounded just as the electricity dissolved into the air around him.

There was a bang.

A hiss.

Then a thunderous boom as a geyser of fire conflagrated from Terra’s location and swallowed him whole.

Roxas smirked as the fireblossom on the other side of the pasture fell away into heavy, black smoke. He could smell burnt cloth, and the stench of scorched metal hung heavy in the air.

“Thought that might do it,” he breathed.

A heavy gust of wind cleared the smoke and forced him to shield his eyes.

When he lowered his arm, Terra stood there, unharmed, his wristband burnt… and the rest of him unharmed. Steel glittered in his eyes, and his gaze was leveled on Roxas like the barrel of a gun.

“Are you done?”

“Shut up,” Roxas grunted, training his sights on Terra once again. He fired off another Fira round and watched a new petal of flame spring from the end of his gun. Terra rolled to the side this time, expecting the blast that burned free in the air to his left. As he came back up, he lifted his off-hand.

A jitter of black and gold lightning shivered up the length of Roxas’s arm and in the periphery of his vision. He glanced down just in time to miss the way Terra’s fingers twitched shut, closing his grip into a fist…

“Wooo-oah!”

He came tumbling ass over end through the air like a graceless comet, arms akimbo and legs fumbling in futility for any semblance of footing.

Terra opened his fingers and caught Roxas by the throat with such force that he could feel his new payday loan bruise well in advance. His fingers reached for the hand that closed around his neck when Terra lifted him up high—

And let go completely when the keybearer planted him like a tree in the dirt.

“Big _oof_ ,” came Prompto’s remark, accompanied by a light chuckle that Roxas recognized as his father’s attempt to stifle his laughter.

Roxas rolled over and shot his father a glare, slamming his fist in the dirt. Terra offered him a hand, but Roxas ignored it, clambering to his feet on his own. Sourly, he picked up his pistol and dusted himself off, still conscious of the new ache in his neck from the chokeslam.

“Whatever that was, it wasn’t fair,” Roxas grunted.

“It wasn’t fair,” Terra agreed. He planted his key in the dirt and rested both hands on its pommel. “It was magic.”

“Normal people can’t do magic.”

“Some can.”

Roxas bit back the urge to say ‘prove it.’ His hand rose to his bruised throat instead. Terra already had. When he looked to his father, he saw no shock waiting for him.

“Again,” Eraqus commanded.

Roxas’s glare found him next.

“With the key, this time. Hold it in your hand. Allow yourself to understand its power, and see the difference for yourself.”

“You want me to fight Terra the Tank Engine with a hunk of wood? What’s round three? I get a squirt gun and a dream?”

“Take it seriously,” Terra instructed. “Or you’re just going to end up on your back again.”

Roxas sighed and marched back to his starting position on the other side of the pasture. He still didn’t believe in magic. He didn’t believe in Terra, or Eraqus. He didn’t even believe in his father anymore — the liar of a man who saw men do magic without flinching and who couldn’t tell him the harsh truth to save his own life.

He believed in Ventus.

He believed in himself.

So he drew the wooden key off of his back.

It was lighter than he remembered, and the wood was warm. Its teeth were clumsily made, and there was something familiar in the heft it kept. Roxas turned it over in his right hand, tossed it to his left, and played with a few different grips. He still hadn’t seen Terra go full out, so he couldn’t copy that… but he remembered playing soldiers with Ven, as kids, and getting whalloped hard.

Roxas settled into a makeshift stance with both hands around the weapon’s grip and closed his eyes for just a fraction of a second.

When he opened them, the world had changed.

Suddenly, he could see the tension in Terra — the way that it lurked under his muscles, the jitter in his eyes like a current of energy available only to the worthy. The key in his hand grew warmer, more familiar, and when Roxas glanced over to his father, he noticed only a touch of that same power. His gaze passed over Eraqus and there he saw a strength so overwhelming that he shrank back, lips falling apart.

When he looked down to the key in his hands, he heard it for the first time: a song so discordant and chaotic that it must’ve been his. It sounded like a song from a far away land and a death knell, a funeral dirge and a triumphant rise smashed together into one cacophonous sound.

It told him to rise, to reach, to conquer, to command, to push beyond loss.

“You feel it,” Terra said, slinging his key over his shoulder like a massive club. “The light in you. It’s finally awake.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Roxas shot back, defensive.

“You can’t hide it once you’ve found it. That key was what you needed to bring it out. It was filled with your brother’s light, honed during his training. It can tell you need the help, so it’s drawing your light out to fight for you instead.”

Roxas still didn’t understand.

“So this power, it’s his?”

“The light’s yours. It just needed a little coaxing.”

Roxas’s fingers tightened around the grip of his wooden keyblade, but he no longer saw a need to avert his eyes. Thanks to Terra, he realized what they were trying to say the whole time. They hadn’t been preaching about some magical, outside power, or some higher calling. They were preaching about the same power he insisted he had the whole time, just begging him to make actual use of it.

Covered in grass stains and with a wooden key in his hands, Roxas figured he was ready enough for that.

He knew he wouldn’t be ready to fight Terra. Not until he figured out how to swing the thing for real. He was smart enough to tell he stood a better chance now than he did before, though.

“Alright,” he answered. “Let’s go then. Ring the bell. Sound the gong. Do whatever you’ve got to do.”

Eraqus lifted his hand.

“Begin!”

Terra shot forward like a bolt this time, surging hard and fast over the ground. Roxas stepped in to meet him and ducked under a blurry strike, rolling around to the man’s other side and retaliating with a whack of his own that found purchase on his foe’s hip. Terra stumbled to the side and whirled around, his key hefted high above his head. Roxas’s eyes flickered up to it and he hopped backward to dodge out of the way faster than he thought he could’ve.

His feet cleared the ground completely and he came skittering to a stop a good ten feet back, completely clear of harm. He spared a surprised glance down at his sneakers, adjusted his stance, and looked up just in time to see Terra extend his left hand.

Black light raced down the length of Roxas’s left arm.

He knew what came next.

Terra pulled him forward through the air and Roxas twirled in like a missile, bringing his keyblade around with a heavy whack that Terra caught with a flick of his own blade. Roxas used the momentum to push off and gain a little more distance, rolling around again to try and flank Terra.

This time, he moved with Roxas, cocking his left hand back again and raising it high over his shoulder. Roxas braced himself hard, planting both feet on the ground, and got ready to move—

Terra plunged his hand toward the grass.

It shattered the ground at his feet and shook the earth like a drill, kicking up an undertow of dirt and power that knocked Roxas flat on his ass. A cloud of dust and debris rose up in its wake as Roxas rolled onto his side and sprang forward, a little dirtied but otherwise alright. He couldn’t even feel the ache he knew he should’ve, or the fear he would’ve before.

He lashed out with three, swift strikes that Terra parried with ease. He replied only once, smacking Roxas across the face with the flat of his blade and sprawling him out on the grass. Tumbling onto his shoulders, Roxas launched himself forward again, this time coming in with a hard, underhanded strike that Terra swayed away from. Before he could retaliate, Roxas rolled forward by him, scooped up the pistol he dropped earlier, and turned.

Terra had only the time to swear and step back before Roxas flicked the third elemancy switch.

A vein of thick ice swallowed his sword arm whole.

Terra’s eyes flickered down for just long enough.

Roxas jumped forward, swinging hard from Terra’s undefended side. The older boy looked up at him, cocked his fingers back, and caught the blow with his bare hand. Roxas grunted as he tried to struggle for a little more give, only to have his weapon wrenched out of his grip and flung into the sky. He looked up and Terra kicked him square in the chest, knocking him ragdoll backwards through the air.

He couldn’t breathe, but that had less to do with his newfound powerlessness and more to do with the size thirteen boot that slammed into the space between his lungs.

He didn’t hit the ground.

He rolled over his shoulders and landed on one knee, now covered in dirt and smudges of green grass. Without the keyblade in his hands, he could feel the ache of his earlier loss, and the new bruise that threatened to bloom across his pectorals. Overhead, the blue sky was absent — replaced by a blank, black canvas that stretched on for eternity.

Beneath him, the grass was gone.

In its place was a hard, glass platform, painted in technicolor. He could see his own face painted across its surface, stretched by his perspective. Spiraling out around him, like stars, were a litany of faces.

Hayner, Pence, Olette.

Lea, Xion, Ventus.

His parents.

And one he didn’t recognize: a soft, round face, curtained by blonde curls that rolled down toward a pair of slender shoulders whose borders only just made it into frame. Roxas clambered to his feet and stepped forward to get a closer look, only for the glass platform beneath him to shake and rumble. Breaths sputtered out of his lungs again, and, a dying engine, Roxas coughed to clear his throat and take in something other than his surroundings.

Terra was gone, so was his father, and Eraqus was nowhere to be seen. Somehow, he’d been kicked into a world of his own.

* * *

He doesn’t remember falling asleep or getting knocked out.

What he does remember is the softness of the couch and the stiffness of its arm when he rallied against it, rising with a sharp exhalation that erased the persistence of his memory. Crackling in the corner of his eye was the fireplace, topped by photos both older and younger than he was. Not too far from him were Terra and Eraqus, waiting in silent vigil in arm-chairs way too big for teenagers. Terra was nursing what smelled like coffee, and Eraqus something like hot chocolate.

Roxas wasn’t sure how he knew. Part of him figured it couldn’t have been smell alone, but intuition. Another part of him knew that his experience earlier in the day left him changed in ways he couldn’t describe — sharper, more perceptive. When his fingers reached for the bruise that should’ve lingered over his throat and the one that no longer waited for him over his diaphragm, he knew those changes were more than mental.

Prompto walked back into the room nursing a cup of his own, carrying something a little more spiced than hot chocolate or coffee. Roxas could smell his father’s whiskey, if not on his breath then just latent in the space between them. He put the cup down on the mantle the second he made eye contact, nearly dropping it in his haste to sit down beside his half-conscious son.

“You okay, bud?” Prompto asked, his words tinged with concern. “You were doing pretty good out there, uh…”

“Up until I passed out.”

“Yeah, up ‘til you passed out.”

Roxas inhaled and rubbed his hands compulsively over the spots his bruises should’ve been.

It was impossible to miss the curl in Prompto’s lip, as if he were expecting some kind of bad news or an impossible announcement that wasn’t coming. Roxas knew better than to tell him what little he remembered of the dream that fled his head second-by-second. All that remained were flashes of blonde and shell pink lips, stuck in his head like echoes bounding off of cave walls.

It was Terra that broke the silence between them, apparently ignorant of the age old tradition that was the post-injury-father-son-care-stare-off.

“You find the proof you were looking for?”

“Yeah,” Roxas muttered, running his fingers through his hair, his mind elsewhere for the first time in days.

“Then what’s your next move?”

“I go with you,” Roxas said, decisively. “And you show me how to use this key of mine."

“I don’t like that plan,” Prompto interjected.

“I’ve got to go, Dad,” Roxas insisted, rising from the couch. “Or Ven’s gonna stay lost out there. This is the only way. I know that now.”

“Roxas—”

“I know I’ve been childish. Kind of… a dick.”

“I mean, I wasn’t going to say that, but—”

“But it’s our best chance to find him. Me going with these two, figuring out how the keyblade works, and using it to track Ven down. Maybe I can’t do that exactly, either, but… something tells me it’s what I’ve gotta do.”

Prompto regarded his son as if it weren’t the first time he sat through that speech and as if it were far from the last time he’d hear it. Roxas didn’t know how he felt about that, or the mysteries hanging over his father’s head like axes looking to grind their joint destiny to pieces.

The Argentum patriarch rose to his feet and ran a hand through his hair the exact same way Roxas did, finger-by-finger until it bled through the blond to reach the borders of his jaw all over again. He even pulled at his bottom lip, too, like Roxas did when struggling with a decision way beyond his ken.

“If you don’t mind,” Eraqus’s voice broke through the tension and the silence. “Terra and I are going to take a look at your feathered friends.”

Terra gazed at both father and son for an unnaturally long second, before turning away to join his master as he made his way out.

When they were gone, the steadfast facade fell away from Prompto’s face. His shoulders slumped forward as he let out what was akin to a deep, resigned breath.

“I know I said we should give this a shot,” Prompto began, the subtle nuances of fear made evident by the trembling in his voice. “But…”

Roxas remained silent, more than aware of the turmoil that ran deep in his father’s heart, understanding the unspoken message: Prompto Argentum could not bear to lose the rest of his family.

“Your time is over, Dad.”

“Who says it’s over?” Prompto replied with mock hurt. “I may be old but my reflexes are still top not—”

Roxas’s father lost his train of thought when a couch cushion slammed into his face. He balked and fell back, scoffing.

“You were saying?”

They shared a laugh, but Prompto fell quiet a lot sooner than either of them thought he would.

“I’m just scared,” he said. “And worried. And scared. And worried.”

“And scared?”

“And worried. Maybe a little scared.”

Roxas could see the memories of the lost flashing in his father’s eyes despite the laugh, waiting there like dark shadows hovering over a mirror’s edge.

“I know.”

Roxas didn’t know what else to say to soothe his father’s worries. He knew they were there the whole time, but part of him hadn’t wanted to believe that. He was always so annoyingly cheery, so full of sunshine that Roxas figured he would’ve found a way to banish the darkness inside of himself. If either he or Ven could wield a keyblade — it was because of him and the light inherent in him.

His father’s hand came down on his knee and Roxas reached out for him, tracing out his fingers with a careful, steady pace. He wanted to find the words to make everything alright, but not every one of Prompto’s talents ran in the family.

“I’ll find him,” Roxas finally concluded. “And come home safe. But I have to go with them, or we might lose him forever. I know it doesn’t make it any easier, but…”

He fell silent again.

It was Prompto’s turn to break the pact.

“I just hoped that you wouldn’t ever have to deal with any of this saving the world stuff,” he whispered, in a voice that told Roxas exactly how familiar he was with the practice. “I started a ranch because it felt better than staying where I was — like it’d be a better place to raise a family.”

Roxas’s brows were long furrowed by that point, but he didn’t interrupt.

“It’s such a heavy weight that I just didn’t want you to ever deal with it.”

“I’m not saving the world,” Roxas affirmed. “I’m just saving Ven.”

Prompto smiled, and shook his head.

“Same thing, isn’t it?”


	4. Providence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fate's an echo. Whether it's the roar of the crowd, a whisper on the wind, or a familiar face burning bright in a friend's smile. Sora arrives in Insomnia. Noctis doesn't know how to feel about that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the late update. Here you go, and hope you do leave us kudos and reviews if you like it.

“Naminé, it’s time.”

Her eyes fluttered open at the deep voice that could only belong to Isa Scientia, her friend and one of her retainers. He was waiting at her bedside, back turned to the door that led out of her bedroom suite and into her kitchenette.

“Good morning, Isa.”

Her retainer simply responded with a mild scoff. Naminé heard the sound of running waters, a sign that he was already halfway through his morning duties. The faint scent of chamomile entered her nostrils, its magic urging her to sink back into her pillows. To fade into oblivion was tempting, but Naminé resisted its call.

Isa was about to usher himself out, but Naminé tugged him by the sleeve and patted the empty space on her bed once he turned to look at her.

“Take a seat. You’ve been busy.”

“I’ve been attending to my duties at your side.”

“I’m asking you as a friend, Isa,” Naminé insisted, the subtle hint of authority in her voice that the older man knew he could not refuse. “Take your duties literally. Take a seat.”

Her arctic blue hues fixated themselves on his face, studying the way that he struggled with himself: his eyes furrowed, cypress irises torn between attending to his day-to-day and the spot on her bed.

Naminé knew his obligations could take a backseat — if he could pull his feet off the ground long enough to relax.

“Your cousin is arriving soon,” he reminded her, sinking to the bed at her side with a frustrated huff. He crossed his arms over his chest, staring dead ahead with the same distant formality he always did.

“Riku?” she echoed his name. It rolled off her tongue like a melody, tinged with nostalgia. “It’s been a long time since we’ve met.”

“You haven’t visited him in quite some time,” Isa noted.

She closed her eyes and shifted closer to Isa, leaning her head against his shoulder as her legs dangled over the side of her bed.

“Seven or eight years. You might be understating things, a little.”

“He made you a promise.”

“He did. We were young and he’s the closest I have to an older brother,” Naminé paused, peering through her eyelashes at the man at her side. “Present company excluded.”

“The Prince of Tenebrae and the Princess of Insomnia,” Isa hummed, taking a good look at the drawings plastered all over the room, held to the walls by papery thin tape. The linen curtains were translucent and they seemed to glow as the sun rays shone into the balcony, filling the room with warmth. It was a stark contrast to how it felt when their feet were to touch the marble floor: cold and rigid.

“I’m not going to court my own cousin,” she laughed, nose wrinkling. “Please tell me you know that.”

Isa cracked a rare smile, shook his head, and shrugged. She pushed against his shoulder, barely resisting the urge to roll her eyes.

She wasn’t as warm as her mother, but she wasn’t her father either. She could keep things lighthearted when the scenario called for it — not that she could blame him. Heavy was the head that wore the crown, heavy were the sins splayed across his shoulders. It weighed on him like a sky full of stars did the titan, and she understood why he was as dour as he was.

The increasing number of calls for his head didn’t help things much either. He never said anything about it, never expressed his worries, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have them.

“Are there any updates on the way things are unfolding outside of the city?” Naminé inquired, cocking her head to the side as she levelled her gaze on Isa. Whatever she was requesting for was part of his duty, but she needed to know what the situation was.

“The daemons have been growing in number,” Isa murmured. “Keep this to yourself. I don’t want your father to have my head just because you deigned to ask.”

“Do go on.”

“Word has it that they may be only tangentially related. Their bodies aren’t plasmic, and there are no traces of the pollution that wracked the sky before your father’s coronation.”

Naminé brought a knuckle to her lips.

“Do we know what the root cause might be?”

“No, though there are a few worrying correlations on the rise. Travelers are disappearing more often at night, and there’s been a sharp increase in the crime rate across the ruralities. Some medical professionals have found traces of the same substance that leaks off of these new daemons in comatose patients nearby,” he explained. “A worrying trend.”

“Do you think these things might be more than simple correlations?”

Isa didn’t meet her gaze. Instead, he leveled those serious eyes of his on the doorway that led to the kitchenette. The tea must’ve been nearly done by then. She adjusted against his shoulder and he rose. She frowned in response, aware that he had so much more to say than he could.

“Who can say?”

* * *

Naminé drank her tea on the way to the train station, her eyes glued to the citizenry that filtered by as colored lines bleeding across her car window. Isa drove in the front, leaving her to enjoy the space in the back and ignore the empty seat beside her driver. Always a loyal retainer, Isa refused to leave her side. Terra, by contrast, held other duties. He couldn’t be there all the time, not that his divided loyalties ever bothered her or her father. King Noctis Caelum was very aware of what his subject did in the low hours.

She didn’t share the same information, but didn’t suppose it mattered. She trusted her father, he trusted Terra, and Terra had always been so kind to her that there was no reason to doubt him. Still, she wished he were there with her.

Riku was a very daunting boy, whose presence brought with it a flock of trouble. The press loved him, which meant that she couldn’t get too close to the cousin she so often wrote to. He was very kind in his letters, often bedraggled by his father, but far more compassionate than the cold man that now ruled Tenebrae in her mother’s stead.

The car pulled into the station and took a place in the front, cutting through the long line of press-cars and passersby that were waiting for their own arrivals. It took Riku about an hour to make his way out of the entrance gates, flanked by a number of exhausted-looking security guards and a pair of faces she only half-recognized.

The oldest of them all was Uncle Talcott, his face flecked by dirt and the hairs of a beard that didn’t quite fit him. His shirt was covered in sawdust and his hair speckled by it. He looked tired, exhausted even as he split off from the youngsters and moved toward her father’s car. Fewer photographers snapped photos of him on his way, seemingly content to ignore the shabby but incredibly worthy man now exiting their orbit.

The other face belonged to a young man that couldn’t have been much older than her, his arm slung amicably around Riku’s shoulder and his lips whispering words into her cousin’s ear that she couldn’t read.

Riku listened intently, nodded once, and then shoved him down the steps without a word. The other boy laughed and scrambled to his feet, chuckling with Riku as he made his way toward the car. Beside them both, the older man that followed them to her car sighed, his fingers massaging the bridge of his nose as if it might rid him of the frustrations he was charged with.

Riku rapped on the roof of her Regalia. Naminé rolled down the window.

She tutted, finger rising to her lips as she surveyed the two men behind Riku. “It’s very rude of you to just assume I’m going to give you a ride, you know.”

He offered her a nod and a calming smile, pulling the hood of his navy jacket up over his head. In the distance, press snapped photo after photo, desperate to take a shot of Tenebrae’s premier prince.

“You wouldn’t leave us out to dry with these jackals, would you?”

“No, I suppose not,” she smiled, scooching over and unlocking the door. “Who’s your friend?”

Riku jerked a thumb toward Sora, surprised.

“This moron?”

“I’m Sora,” the boy chirped, throwing an arm around Riku and shoving himself half into the car so that she could finally get a good look at him.

He was shorter than Riku by about half a head, and his shoulders were slimmer. He must’ve been a little younger, maybe a bit less wise. When he smiled, the sun overhead burned a little brighter. Just the sight of him warmed her somehow. His face was so open and his heart so bursting that not trusting him at first sight was an impossibility.

“Nice to meet you, Sora,” Naminé smiled in reply, extending her hand as he clambered into the car ahead of Riku. “I’m Naminé.”

“Naminé Lux Caelum,” Riku concluded.

Sora blinked.

“Wait, Lux Caelum… like Lucis Caelum — like the King?”

“She’s clearly not the king,” Riku said, climbing in after him.

Naminé smoothed her dress and folded her hands over her lap. “I’m his daughter.”

Sora flashed her another dazzling grin.

“You look just like him!”

Riku flinched. “What, no, she—”

“You mean that I look like my mother?”

“Nah,” Sora said, adjusting to his position in the middle seat. “You’re really pretty, but in a different way than she is. You’ve got your dad’s nose, too.”

Naminé studied him for a second, caught off guard by that observation. Most people who did know her didn’t care to make that distinction. It was easy to forget sometimes that she wasn’t her mother’s twin, even if she was the next best thing. They were so resemblant that she could have passed for a time capsule.

Sora didn’t look much like his father, which wasn’t a bad thing. Talcott was handsome, in a rugged, thirty-something-year-old carpenter sort of way. His clothes were a stark departure from his father’s modesty; he wore a tank, some vibrant red shorts, and golden shoes that were covered in dirt and sand.

The security guards that led them to the car deposited their luggage in the trunk and spread off into their own vehicles, prepared by the crown earlier in the day. Up ahead, her father’s car began to pull away from the station. Isa, his eyes glued to its bumper, followed suit.

“So, Sora,” she began, clearing her throat. “What brings you to Insomnia?”

“My dad wanted to talk to your dad,” he said, stretching an arm out around both of his new traveling companions. Naminé didn’t flinch away, but the feeling was foreign to her. Isa certainly didn’t touch her. Looking at Riku, he didn’t seem at all perturbed by the fact that Sora was touching him.

Usually, he kept people at a distance.

“And how do you two know each other, exactly?”

“Well, he’s my dad.”

“She meant how do you know me,” Riku interrupted.

“Oh, we’ve known each other forever!”

Naminé’s brow furrowed at that.

“He’s a longtime friend,” Riku concluded. He sounded so bitter about having a friend that she couldn’t help but laugh a little. He wouldn’t have put up with anyone who couldn’t keep up with him.

“Aw, thanks buddy,” Sora snickered, leaning into Riku a little.

He was so much like a puppy in people clothes that it was endearing.

Naminé brought the conversation back to the topic at hand. “And your father wanted to talk to my father?”

“Yep. It seemed kinda important.”

“Important enough to get you on my private train,” Riku said, leveling a snarky look at Sora.

A knuckle pursed at her lip, Naminé frowned.

“I wonder what they could be talking about.”

* * *

“Like you requested, I managed to gather a name list of the missing hunters within the area. Libtertus mentioned one name that had me on edge,” Talcott explained. “Thought you might want to see it.”

“Who?” Noctis asked, raising an eyebrow.

The King’s Regalia rumbled over the roadway, the city blurring by in streaks. In the distance, a grey tower presided over the skyline, backed by a gang of storm clouds that drifted ominous toward the city. Talcott shifted in his seat, spreading cedar shrapnel over the leather as if he owned it. Noctis, across from him, waited on tenterhooks while his wife stared out the window beside him.

His car was larger than his daughter’s, reflective of his status and the space he needed to entertain the numerous dignitaries that he wished never climbed into it. He much preferred men like Talcott, who didn’t care about the vintage of his wine or the brand of his whiskey.

“You’re not gonna like it.”

“Talcott, you came here to give me bad news. Just give me the bad news.”

“It was an Argentum.”

Noctis let out a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding. Seated next to him, Lunafreya tightened a hold on his hand, grounding him.

“Not Prompto, right?”

“No. One of the twins. Ventus.”

That wasn’t much better.

“According to Libertus, he was out with other hunters when they encountered the tracks of a wayward Chocobo,” he continued.

“How do they know it was his?”

“Green feather, from when—”

“He tried to paint it. I was there. Prompto knows?”

“Yeah. Ventus was on the way home when he got attacked.”

“Attacked? Was he…?”

“No, there wasn’t any body. He wasn’t a hunter, so we’re not sure how he fits into the pattern, either. He might’ve been taken, but it doesn’t look like anything killed him.”

Noctis leaned back in his seat as thoughts flitted through his head. It had been a long time since he heard from Prompto. What was doing? Where was he staying now?

“Prompto alright?”

Talcott sighed.

“He hasn’t been quite himself. Not since…” Talcott trailed off. “He really hasn’t reached out to you?”

Noctis shook his head.

“Not really.”

His fingers worked over each other at the thought. That melancholy was a fever. Contagious, it burnt the silence between them. Talcott shifted in his seat; Luna offered comfort where she could, rubbing circles into the back of his hand.

Nobody thought expected Prompto Argentum would be the most distant of their quartet.

“What about you?” Noctis dared to ask, his steely eyes giving way to a warm emotion that could only be granted for people he loved.

“I have,” Talcott admitted. “He’s got a ranch, but it’s not his thing.”

“Do ranchers usually keep a fifty cal under their truck bed?”

“I guess he sells guns here and there. Other things, every once in a while.”

The days overshadowed by blight were long gone, but the effects still lingered on in the present. It was plain, from the wordless relief in their eyes to the battle scars littered across their bodies. The memory of each cut, both visible and invisible, brought great pain.

For Noctis, the incisions ran deeper than deep.

“I see.”

Talcott continued, hoping that the rest of the information would prevent his king from retreating into his memories, “Roxas, the other kid, saw the bird too.”

“Roxas was rather fond of you, Noctis,” Lunafreya ventured. “You may want to reach out. He barely came up to your knee the last time you saw him.”

The memory alone brought a smile to his lips.

“Cape Caem. Good memories.”

Toddlers. Play fights. Kids made from different colors that bled as clear as crayons. Ventus radiated towards Gladio; Roxas seemed to find solace with Noctis. He highly doubted they could remember days that far gone.

“I’ll extend the hand.”

Lunafreya removed her comfort and Noctis straightened in his seat. In the front, a driver that wasn’t Ignis shifted, hidden by the black glass divider.

“There was something else,” Talcott began. “It’s a heavy ask.”

“Anything for you, Talcott. What do you need?”

“It’s about the kid…”

* * *

It didn’t take long to get to the castle. The traffic was dense, but it parted for the royal envoy without much fuss. Riku split off from the group minutes after entering the front gate, slipped his security detail, and went off on an adventure into the city. Sora, collared by his father, followed Naminé and her escort on a tour of the palace.

Isa showed them the entry hall and its brilliant stonework. He gestured quietly to the proud lion facades that decorated the place, the sigils that spanned its carpets, and the path that led to the throne room. He took the time to lead them through the fountain outside to the lowermost entrance of the castle, where a majority of the servants and workers made their entrances.

He showed them everything he could, and when he could think of nothing else, he led them to his favorite place.

The kitchens were empty by the time Isa brought Naminé and her newest acquaintance to them. Dim lights buzzed overhead as the three of them waded into his sanctuary. Sora was amazed by every step of the way; first it was the grandiosity of the walls around them, then the rich color of the carpets… everything was worth a compliment to him, from how clean it all was to the chefs on their way out as the three of them came in.

Still, if Isa found it off-putting, he didn’t say anything. Naminé found that quite admirable — she knew how little he liked sunshine.

She laughed at Sora’s joke about chefs being mean (because they beat eggs and whip cream) and hopped up onto the countertop beside the sink, folding her hands over her lap while Isa prepared them some tea. She watched him work idly, considering the way his hands moved carefully over the burners, how they handled the china. He was a lot more graceful than most expected.

Where Isa was a wolf, however, Sora was a labrador.

“I don’t think I’d want to live in a castle like this, even if it is nice,” he admitted, resting his elbows on the countertop beside her. “It’d get way too lonely. As long as my house is bigger than Riku’s, I’m alright.”

“What a well placed priority,” Isa commented.

Naminé smiled at that.

“Play nice, Isa.”

“I’ll try,” he grumbled.

“Sora,” she began, tapping her chin with the end of her forefinger. “What do you think our fathers are talking about?”

“No idea.”

“Not even a guess?”

Sora thought it over. He let his head roll back on his shoulders, his back propped up against the countertop. He was practically spilling over into Naminé’s lap. Looking down at him from above, she wondered what he might’ve been thinking.

“Well, there is one thing, I guess.”

“What is it?”

“Dad doesn’t want me telling people.”

“Does it help if I order you to?”

“You’re not the boss of me.”

“I may not be the boss, but I am the princess,” she offered a playful smile.

Sora whistled appreciatively.

“You’ve got me there.”

“So what is it that you aren’t supposed to tell me?”

“Well, maybe it’s more of… I’m not supposed to show you.”

Sora lifted his right hand, glanced down at it, and cocked his fingers experimentally. A rush of sparks raced down the length of his arm. Isa spun, eyes wide, and Naminé leaned back.

“But I guess my dad won’t mind. He knows I’m not good at keeping secrets.”

His fingers twitched again, producing another swell of light and...

* * *

“... A giant key?”

King Noctis swilled the whiskey in his glass, staring down at its ochre as if it might turn to blood. He wasn’t sure what Talcott was getting at. They still hadn’t discussed the favor he needed, just a lot of build up. Sora could summon a giant key at will, and he could probably do other things, too.

The walls of his personal study were thick, but even still, Talcott’s secret felt too easy to leak. Sora didn’t look like a very private boy. If word got out he could use magic, the entire kingdom would start calling for Noctis’s head on a silver platter. Ever since Ardyn’s defeat, the people looked at him as if he’d cheated fate. The six weren’t happy with him, or so they said, as if they understood anything about the six or knew Titan’s toenail from a molehill.

That didn’t stop the superstitious from assuming that Sora could be a secret royal, some long-hidden regent that could take the throne. He was a boy, and though Noctis bore him no ill-will, he knew better than to throw a man’s worries at someone barely old enough to understand them in the first place.

Above all that, Sora looked like a good kid. He was happy, friendly… he made Naminé smile not six seconds out of the car, and that was something he valued. He didn’t want the boy pulled into anything that might change that.

“So that’s what you wanted to tell me? Your son can do magic?”

“Not just that,” Talcott continued, resting his chin against his interlocked fingers. “It’s like he was born with it. The minute I found him on those rocks, washed up like driftwood, I knew… I’ve seen whatever he’s got once before. In someone else.”

“Where?”

Talcott stared ahead pointedly. Noctis’s frown deepened.

“What? From me?”

“It’s… warm. It’s like he’s brimming with it. I’ve never felt anything like it before, except… watching you fight.”

“That should be impossible,” Lunafreya pursed her lips, glancing toward Noctis. “What do you think?”

Noctis drained his glass. The whiskey burned down his throat, burned on the breath that replaced it, and led him to take a seat in the armchair across from Talcott.

“I think we’re finally getting around to that favor.”

Jared’s heir frowned, knobbled fingers working fervently over each other. He didn’t fit in with the flush leathers of the study, or the muddy brown books that looked familiar but weren’t. Everything about Noctis’s new life left him feeling out of place. That didn’t mean he couldn’t see the man he once knew underneath, waiting to return.

“Those creatures, the ones that’ve been taking hunters off the roads— I’ve seen them.”

“In person?”

“In person.”

Noctis poured himself another glass of whiskey, only to put it down. Padding over toward the chair where his wife sat, his hands slipped into his pockets like stones through the surface of a lake.

“Go on then. Are they daemons? Reports say they’re…”

“Different, yeah. Every bit as mean though. Eyes like little lamps, claws that can cut through steel. They don’t look as scary, but they pack a punch. A bunch of them cornered me, not long ago.”

“And you fought your way out?”

“No.”

“Then you… ran? I’ve been there,” Noctis mused, conversationally, clearly glad that Talcott wasn’t a dead man.

“No.”

“You are going to tell me what happened, aren’t you?”

“Sora saved me. He pulled out that key and sliced them to ribbons. It didn’t look like he knew what he was doing with the thing, but it put dents in them easy enough. Bullets didn’t do anything, and I hit one with a two-by-four but it just kept coming.”

Noctis lifted one hand out of his pocket and braced his chin against his forefinger. Rubbing the outline of it with a thumb, he paced toward his desk. “That’s not good.”

“And it’s not the weirdest part either. They were… as soon as Sora showed up, they acted like I didn’t exist. They weren’t paying attention to me at all.”

The King turned, peering at Talcott as if sizing him up. It wasn’t the first time he knew Talcott to be helpless, but somehow, seeing him now as a man, it was harder to believe. He wasn’t the scared little boy that lost his grandfather all those years ago. He was a carpenter, a builder, a hero to the people who knew him. He was all those things, but not a liar.

To know that he’d been saved by a boy greener than grass was surreal.

For a long time, Noctis said nothing. Outside, the clouds swirled closer to the city. Gentle droplets of rain buffeted the window, splattering against the pane. Lunafreya’s eyes bore holes into his back, waiting for a response. He wanted to ask her what she felt, what her thoughts were — but there was no time for that. Not when Talcott needed an answer.

“I’ll do it.”

“You don’t know the question—”

“Yeah, I do.”

Turning to appraise his friend, Noctis picked up the glass of whiskey he set down earlier.

“Your boy’s a beacon for those things. If someone doesn’t train him, then he’s going to get hurt. Magic key or not, his options for a master are limited.”

When Talcott didn’t say anything, Noctis knew he’d hit the mark.

“So I’ll do it. Ravus trained Riku. I’m not going to lose to him. The guy’s a dick,” Noctis muttered, bracing himself. “Naminé’s not interested in the sort of training I can give her, either... So I’ll train Sora.”

Unspoken was the sentiment that Noctis owed him that. Jared was gone, a ghost of the past, but Sora still glimmered brilliantly on Talcott’s horizon. He was the future once thought lost, a hope for the days yet to come.

Lunafreya stiffened across the room as Talcott stood to shake her husband’s hand. Neither of them saw the frown across her face, or the hesitance in the way she joined them.

* * *

“What you’re saying is that these creatures are somehow attracted to you,” Isa asked, deadpanned, but there was a tinge of annoyance and disbelief implied. “Wouldn’t your presence being here be a complete danger to the princess?”

“What? Nah.”

Isa didn’t lower the frying pan in his hands. Naminé didn’t remember him snatching it from the cupboard, but she remembered the moment she noticed it, a mere second after Sora summoned his key. Even unarmed, Isa was no slouch.

“I don’t believe you,” he said.

“My dad was supposed to talk to the king about it, but they’ve kinda been taking a while. Do you think they’ll be done soon? No offense, but I wanna see more of the city.”

“They have a lot of catching up to do,” Naminé answered, offering a cup of tea for the energetic boy before her. “It’s been a while since Uncle Talcott came here. The last time I saw him was… well, months ago.”

Finally, Isa lowered his frying pan to the notch it belonged on. Hesitant, he watched as Sora sipped from the cup the princess offered him. He didn’t laugh when the boy recoiled, nose wrinkled up.

“Particular about your tea?”

“It tastes so bitter,” Sora grumbled. “Do you have anything sweeter?”

Naminé raised an eyebrow. “I rarely find anyone in the palace who likes their tea sweet. I’ve always thought it was just me.”

“Dad always said it’s weird that I like it that way,” Sora grinned. “He says it’s a country thing. Some guy used to make him sweet tea all the time, when he was my age.” “Ignis Scientia,” Isa offered up, looking unimpressed.

“Yeah, him.”

“Our fathers are all very close, but even if they weren’t... I’m shocked you didn’t immediately know the name.”

“Names never really mattered all that much to me,” Sora shrugged. “I care more about the face behind ‘em. You can tell me Naminé’s a princess, and she might be, but I’m only ever gonna think of her as Naminé.”

Isa scoffed, but Naminé smiled at the thought.

Sora was a very endearing boy, whether he knew that or not.

“Did you get that from your father, Sora?”

Before he could answer, the sound of footsteps coming down the hall outside of the kitchen stole her attention away. Sora rambled on in spite of them, but his answer fell on deaf ears. She recognized the thud-thud of those boots, the slight limp and delay that they carried. She was unsurprised when her father stepped through the doorway, flanked by Talcott. Her mother was nowhere to be seen.

The conversation in the room came to a slow halt, with all eyes drifting toward the King. Even Sora looked, drawn by the way Naminé and Isa gave him their attention. His gaze flickered back and forth between Noctis and his father, shifting while he tried to figure out why they looked so serious.

“Sora,” Noctis began, stepping forward.

He extended his hand. Sora regarded it carefully.

“Noctis Lucis Caelum,” the King announced. “King of Insomnia.”

When Sora shook his hand, the King cleared his throat.

“And I believe it’s about time we had a conversation.”


	5. The End Is The Beginning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Parting ways is the hardest thing to do, regardless of whether there is a choice or not.

Rays of a burnt god fell through the cemetery trees, spread as gold across the green grass, and caught fire over Ignis’s feet and the grave beneath them. Aqua knew he couldn’t see it, but the warmth comforted him even if it didn’t comfort her any. The anniversary of her mother’s death was a day that would always be hard for her to amble through, no matter how hard she threw herself into her work. There never was enough of it to go around, and she couldn’t train when her mind was so scattered.

It was a shame, how lucky her brother was by comparison. Fingers drumming against her arm, she glanced toward the dirt path that cut through the lilies, waiting to see a shock of blue hair that probably wasn’t coming at all.

“He’s late again.”

“Something must have popped up that required his immediate attention,” was Ignis’s smooth reply, grazing his fingers across the stone ridge of the grave. “I’d say your brother got the better end of the deal with Naminé. It’s a miracle she didn’t inherit her father’s rebellious side.”

“That’s not an excuse,” Aqua mumbled, feeling the breeze as it cut over the grass.

She couldn’t tell if it was jealousy or actual anger, but she wasn’t sure it mattered. Isa wasn’t there, he never was, and even though she loved him it was hard to forget how quickly he forgot them all. There were no limits to the shackles of his duty, but he never wanted to impose them anyway.

Aqua stepped up to join her father, lips tilted downward into an anniversarial frown. Ignis didn’t react, his fingers still stroking the stone. The flowers over her grave were his, and Aqua knew she would have loved them. She hadn’t brought anything of her own. There hadn’t been time, not in between the hours she spent trying to forget.

It wasn’t that she hadn’t moved on.

It was just that she had so much left to say, and no way to say it.

Her mother couldn’t see her strength. Her mother couldn’t see her wit, her charm. She couldn’t see the grace or dignity her daughter carried on to pride her memory. She couldn’t see the light bursting in Aqua’s heart, ready to bloom across lands both near and far. Absently, Aqua wondered if there were an after, and if that after could be applied to the bravest woman she ever knew. Her fingers worked over the stained glass in her hands, nervous at the thought of what her mother might think of her now.

“I’m certain that you did her proud,” Ignis remarked, his smile hidden.

“Thank you.”

“What’ve you got in your hands?”

Aqua didn’t jump, but her heart did skip a beat. It always amazed her what her father could still see, the little cues he picked up on when people thought they could hide things from him.

“A wayfinder. I made them for Ven and Terra. So we’d have something just for us.”

“Did you know that the stars were the original wayfinders?" Ignis mentioned. "Navigators the world over would follow them for guidance, to dock in ports familiar to them and cross the paths of ships following those same stars."

Aqua didn’t respond, still turning her little, blue charm over in her hands.

“It’s foreign to think of those ancient days, and how their touch reaches us even still,” Ignis whispered, kneeling before his love’s grave. The aubade sky overhead burned cold, its warmth dying by the minute. “I meant it when I said she would be proud of you. Your brother, too, of course, but she always did like you best.”

Isa cleared his throat from somewhere behind them. Aqua turned to see him standing there, shoulders proud and head held high as always. It wasn’t hard to see Ignis’s regal bearing in him, but there was little resemblance to be found elsewhere.

Neither of them looked like their father.

They didn’t have his eyes. They lacked his lithe build, and they didn’t carry on the slope of his nose.

“You made it,” Aqua breathed, the thought halfway hitched in her throat.

As if he would have missed it.

His eyes never moved away from the headstone. Aqua watched him stare for a long moment before bringing her gaze to her father’s back. Ignis didn’t turn, his attention fixed on the same grave that his son now watched over. She wondered, faintly, if he could see it in his mind’s eye. He had once seen the world, and though those days were gone, the image must have been simple enough to conjure.

Through grief came the terrible power of memory, and as they stood among lilies and wilted stone, she couldn’t help but to know that her father understood well the sight he was missing out on. He couldn’t see the dimples in his wife’s grave, but he knew the words inlaid across its face, and he knew the scent of the flowers that he laid down over it year after year.

He knew the way there by heart, on the off-days and the on-ones.

Unlike Aqua, unlike his son, he visited it often. It was not a trip saved for anniversaries or more annual obligations. She remembered hearing him speak to it once, as if their mother could hear through the earth, and as if his sorrow might give him a hand to hold through the grass.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” Isa finally said, his voice softer than she expected.

Her hand found his shoulder. “It’s alright. I wasn’t trying to give you a hard time.”

Isa stiffened at her touch, but her words were a balm all the same. There were no storm clouds on the burning horizon, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t feel them. A hand rose to his face, wiping away a day’s worth of fatigue. Ignis didn’t miss that, even if he couldn’t see it.

“Why were you late?”

“The King kept me. His daughter has a new friend,” Isa explained. “A fourteen-year-old boy with the power to wield the light.”

Ignis’s head craned, slightly.

“The light, you say? Of Kings?”

“No.”

Aqua’s fingers worked over each other as her brother explained further, detailing the intricacies of Sora’s unique power. “A Keyblade. Like…?”

“Like yours.”

That thought didn’t seem to make her any more comfortable with the idea of a boy wielding a weapon. Ventus was still only recently gone, and his memory hung over the image of Sora like an axe over a kneeling man’s neck.

“Is he…?”

“I don’t know. The King insists he’ll train him.”

Ignis nodded to that sentiment.

“He’ll be alright. Noctis isn’t as powerful as he used to be, but he’s not as withered as his father. The Ring hasn’t been wearing him down.”

“He doesn’t have to wear it,” Aqua admitted, “now that times are peaceful.”

“Mhm.”

Isa’s hands fell in his pockets, and he let out a long, slow breath.

“Is this all we’re here for? To feast on little morsels of conversation over a headstone?”

“Better here than the dinner table.”

“This can wait.”

Aqua frowned, but Ignis didn’t seem bothered by his son’s refusal to delve into the matter. “He just wants her to know about your life, Isa.” “She can’t hear me.”

Ignis stiffened at that, fingers rolling to the arms of his sunglasses in order to pull them down. He folded them over the lenses, one by one. Isa knelt by the grave, lifted a lily off of the bouquet her husband left behind, and turned to leave.

“I’ll be at the castle,” he muttered. “If you need me.”

* * *

Dark clouds loomed in the distance, foreshadowing a terrible storm. Noctis could smell the rain in the air, something he had picked up during his time out in the wild, away from the comforts of home. He made sure to keep his distance, watching as father and son shared their last words, their last moments together.

As promised, Noctis would be taking Sora under his wing. That meant that Sora would be required to stay on castle grounds until he got better at using whatever power he had been blessed with.

_Or cursed with,_ Noctis thought to himself.

The conversation with Sora went rather smoothly. As expected of a fourteen-year-old child, he was enthusiastic about saving the world, ignorant of what a hero complex could bring in the near future. 

As a son, he felt for Sora, whether the boy realized it or not. Even in the distance, it was evident that Sora was not amused by his father’s excessive concern.

“Are you going to be alright here?” Talcott asked, brows furrowed together.

“Dad,” Sora whined, arms flailing everywhere. “For the millionth time, I’ll be a-okay!”

Another hand slipped into his. Noctis recognised the familiar warmth, settling beside him. As a father, he felt for Talcott. 

“Ignorance is bliss,” Lunafreya murmured. “If only.”

“Right?”

“Sora doesn’t seem very used to life in the city. I don’t think he’ll enjoy the restraint of it all.”

“Sounds kinda familiar.”

Noctis grinned, turning away while father and son shared an embrace. Talcott was a lot more grungy than he used to be; his hair was wilder, his clothes covered in a perpetual layer of dirt and sawdust that belayed his penchant for carpentry. He was always on the move, ever since Jared’s death, always looking for something new to throw himself into with a fervor that let him hide the past.

His care for Sora must’ve been part of that, but it was way healthier than losing himself in his work. Sora was a living thing, a cub that he could nurse. Sora was a way for Talcott to atone, even if he wasn’t going to admit it, and his care for the boy showed that so clearly that he found Sora’s obliviousness to it a little shocking.

“Are you really going to train the boy?”

“Sure,” Noctis shrugged, shoving both hands down through his pockets. White pinstripes cut over a black suit, contrasted with the black shirt and tie he wore beneath it, and lit his gray-green eyes like sparking flint. He didn’t look as young as he used to, but the years were almost as kind to him as they were to Luna. “I’ve still got enough fight in me for that.”

The two took a step away, peering over at Talcott and his son while they traded goodbyes for the ten thousandth time. Lunafreya exhaled, letting her stress out through the nose.

“You’re going to overexert yourself,” she told him.

“Plenty left in the tank.”

“Can you still…?”

“Yeah, for sure.”

She fixed him with a stern look and he grabbed her by the hand, his fingers warm to the touch and the energy brimming beneath his skin reassuring.

“I owe this to Talcott. I won’t overdo it. Sora’s just a kid. It’s not going to take much to show him the ropes,” Noctis reassured her, bringing her knuckles to his lips. He smiled between them, planting a kiss on the very tips of her fingers. “You can knock him around a little, if you want. I can loan you the trident.”

“It’s my trident to begin with,” she frowned, voice soft.

“Right. So I’ll let you borrow it back.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about. Just because they can’t tell the difference, doesn’t mean—”

“I’ll be careful.”

“You swear to be?”

“I swear a lot.”

Lunafreya’s stern gaze only intensified.

“Yeah, I swear,” Noctis acquiesced, leaning in to kiss his wife on the cheek. Lunafreya looked away, and Noctis stepped back toward the father and son parting ways, a hand falling on Talcott’s shoulder.

Lunafreya missed the feeling of his hand in hers already — it never felt anything but fleeting.

* * *

Prompto Argentum followed his son all the way to the coast, where Eraqus and his newest follower were set to board a train headed to Insomnia. The old bridge that led to the city was still there, but the traffic was merciless. Insomnia was the world’s leading trade capital after the first fall of Accordo, and that left the city perpetually swamped by tourists, travelers, and tradesmen looking to make a buck.

The rail service was unfettered in comparison. Train travel was slowly dying out, and despite the speed rail that ran under the bridge and came up to the main station in the city, most people preferred the cramped innards of their own car.

“It just doesn’t make sense is all I’m saying,” Prompto dismissed, waving his hand in the air as he and Roxas came to a stop at the turnstyle that led to the parting platform. “Birds can swim. You can take a chocobo literally the whole way.”

Roxas scoffed, brushing some of his messy blond hair out of his eyes. He was dressed a little messily — a gray and red sweatshirt with no sleeves, collared with red, offset a thin, black longsleeve with a plaid lining. His sweatshirt’s zipper was half-down, the sleeves on his shirt half-up, and he looked a lot like a boy trying way too hard to be casual. Prompto really couldn’t believe that he dressed himself every day, but he wasn’t going to bite his son’s fashion sense. Not when it was the last time he’d see him for a while.

“Birds can’t swim that far,” Roxas shot back.

“You can’t prove that.”

“Why would I want to prove that?”

“Don’t you wanna be right?”

“Not if it means drowning a bird, you lunatic.”

“Woah, woah, they make floaties for chocobos now,” Prompto whined. “It’ll be fine.”

“I’m sorry,” Roxas said, pivoting, his face screwed up in consternation. “Is your whole argument about to be that anything can get across the ocean with enough floaties?”

“Is your argument about to be that something can’t?”

Roxas looked thankful when Eraqus cleared his throat from the other side of the turnstyle. His pepper hair and scarred face didn’t look amused by their banter, but then again, he didn’t look amused by much. He was a very serious man. Prompto liked that about him. It was familiar and left him with the feeling that his son was in good hands.

“Ah, sorry, sorry,” Prompto apologized. “We’ll get a move on in a minute. Is it alright if we, uh, take a sec? I wanna give my son a lecture on train etiquette before he hops on.”

Eraqus stole a glance at the clock. Roxas opened his mouth to protest, and Prompto clamped his hand right over it. 

“If you’d like,” the old master decided. “We have ten minutes. Terra and I will secure our seats. Do not be late, Roxas.”

When he glanced over, Prompto’s hand was back at his side.

“Yeah, sure,” Roxas muttered. “I won’t be late.”

The two of them waited till Eraqus and Terra were out of sight before the younger Argentum turned to his father. Instead of the sunshine attitude he’s accustomed to seeing his father emulate, Roxas sensed something else altogether. It reminded him of a dark cloud, blocking out the sun’s rays. It was hanging over his father, as though he were the sun whose light was obscured. 

Roxas had seen this before. 

“Dad.”

A single word snapped his father from whatever dark crevice of his mind he had sunken into, as dark as ink stains on parchment.

“You’re doing that thing again,” Roxas pointed out. “The thing that you did when Mom died.”

Was leaving his father behind really such a good idea?

Prompto wordlessly pulled Roxas into a hug, pressing the boy’s smaller frame against his own, earning a yelp from Roxas.

Moments later, he returned the notion, bringing his arms to wrap around his father’s midsection.

Roxas could feel Prompto’s lips curving upwards, pressed against the crown of his hair, but the faint tremors of his father’s body betrayed his true feelings. The younger blonde might not be as compassionate as his father and Ventus, but empathy was something he had. The pain he felt from losing his brother and mother was probably nothing in comparison to what Prompto was going through right this very moment.

His father was losing his entire family to circumstances beyond his control, to forces he could not quite explain.

“Dad, I…”

He could not quite say that he was sorry because there was nothing to apologise for. Roxas knew, deep in his heart, that the only way forward was the path he had chosen to go.

Whether it was a right or a wrong decision, that was a bridge that would be crossed when it came down to it.

“You two better come home,” Prompto teased, pulling back. 

With a wide grin, Roxas replied, “That’s a promise.”

* * *

There was a foreboding sense of finality that accompanied him as he boarded the train.

With a hiss, the door slid closed behind him.

Roxas’s eyes roamed about the train, taking in the vintage vibes of the vessel. It was fairly devoid of people. The few passengers that were there had the fashion sense of aristocratic diplomats, as though they were traveling across the globe to bring about a huge change.

Maybe they were just mere business, but it was difficult to tell just from the first glance.

At the end of the passenger were Eraqus and Terra, already prepared for the long train ride home. Their keyblades remained hidden from view, but Roxas could still see his other weapon – the one he had seen in Pence’s photograph – prepped and ready, lest they should run into trouble.

But what were the chances of that happening? 

They were deep in a hushed conversation and for a brief moment, Roxas wanted to remove himself from the picture. While he was not bothered by being the outsider, this felt different.

“Master, you said that there’s another one? Just like us?” was the first thing he heard as soon as he came within hearing range, sliding into the empty seat next to Terra, next to the window.

A grave nod was Eraqus’s answer.

“Do you mean a Key—”

“Yes. I need to speak to His Majesty,” Eraqus continued, cutting Roxas off. “It seems that there is an influx of people like us.”

“Roxas, you will need to be prepared for what is to come. While you have trained long and hard for this day, I’m afraid that time is of the essence. Once we reach the station, we’ll rendezvous with Aqua. She’s a friend of your brother and Terra.”

“Yeah. I remember her,” he said, fingering the edges of the wayfinder pushed deep in his pocket. 

“Your father said that you liked the window seat,” the burly boy remarked, a ghost of a smile upon his lips. “He’s looking out for you, you know.”

The train’s engines roared to life and before he knew it, the train picked up its speed. He waved at his father until the train rolled away from the station. Roxas scoffed inwardly at his father’s attempt – or as Prompto would call it: enthusiasm – to keep up with the train’s speed.

Alas, he was all but a train and his father eventually became nothing more than a speck of gold, black and red as he faded away into the distance.

For a brief moment, Roxas wondered whether that had been a tear rolling down his father’s cheeks.


	6. The Gathering

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They say that seven is a lucky number. In this case, it isn't.

“I didn’t know Uncle Talcott was married,” Naminé probed, not looking at her father while his two, young pupils battled back and forth across the courtyard.

“He isn’t. Sora was adopted by Talcott. Found him washed up on the rocks beneath the lighthouse.”

Sora leapt forward at the mention of his name, blunted training sword flying through the air on a two-handed path toward Riku’s shoulder.

“That certainly sounds mysterious,” Naminé mused, watching as Riku caught Sora’s blow with the shaft of his own blade. The younger boy let out a groan when Riku pushed him away, booted him squarely in the chest, and sent him tumbling backward over the grass. He was up in a flash, ready to go again before Riku could take so much as three steps forward.

“I guess so,” Noctis replied. “Gladio was born with a beard, and I’m pretty sure Prompto was hatched out of an egg, so...”

Naminé snorted.

“It’s not really about where you get your start,” Noctis continued.

Sora whacked Riku across the face with the flat of his sword, and the older, silver-haired boy went caterwauling to the left. His hand lingered on his cheek, and he muttered something under his breath before he rounded on Sora with his weapon held high. The younger boy deflected a few blows, but Riku wasn’t going to give him an inch.

He looked so much like his father, that fury in his eyes, that Noctis couldn’t help but get caught up in a flash of memory that faded faster than a firefly.

“It’s mostly about the road you take, the friends you make, whatever else a good dad’s supposed to tell you it’s about,” he trailed off, only half-kidding. “Your mom’s better with the whole wisdom thing than I am.”

Naminé didn’t exactly agree, but the smile on her face would’ve been admissible in court.

“I see,” she said, covering her mouth with her hand.

They lapsed into silence until the sound of a familiar, determined gait pulled their attention away.

“Your Majesty, Terra has returned with unexpected visitors. My sister is with them,” Isa announced, his iconic monotone resounding throughout the room.

“Unexpected visitors? I’m the King,” Noctis frowned. “Are they not on the schedule? I’m trying to spend some time with my kid here.”

“My sister insists it’s urgent.”

Noctis glanced over at Naminé, who waited expectantly for an answer. She didn’t seem to care if he stayed or if he went, but he was enjoying the quiet with her whether she knew that or not. Arms crossed, he looked away from the still battling teenagers who were still fighting in the yard. 

“Give me a minute. Let them know I’m coming.” 

* * *

Noctis didn’t expect to meet Prompto’s kids with the ‘S’ stricken off the end. He hadn’t wanted that to be the way Naminé saw them either, as an unfinished set. He put a hand on her shoulder as she stood beside him, concern etched across her face like a pattern in wool.

A crossed out sign, Roxas Argentum stood at the base of the throne without the same bowed posture as the adults beside him. Eraqus, the peppery looking man, and Terra rose to full height beside him. Aqua saw no need to rise from her bow until well after the other two, her face equally serious. Terra looked absolutely embarrassed despite having met Noctis for the first time as a baby, incapable of bowing himself. Eraqus seemed only to be observing the formality, and he made no move to scold Roxas for his lack of decorum.

“Right,” Noctis exhaled, doing his best to uphold his kingly aura. “So. Your dad?”

“... Not doing so hot,” Roxas mumbled.

He was the splitting image of his father. It was hard to imagine Prompto with such a tired face or so ready to scowl, but Noctis could tell that the boy’s lack of interest wasn’t a lack of respect. In some way, he figured he took after his father — and that hiding his nerves, avoiding the bow, treating Noctis like a mortal — he showed his reverence through normalcy.

“He couldn’t have called?”

“Sir, there’s a reason for that,” Terra spoke up, earning Naminé’s attention.

As soon as Naminé and Terra made eye contact, bright grins spread across their faces, but they refused to let go of their professionalism. Terra’s grin faded when he sighted back to Noctis, stern once again.

His daughter’s eyes fell on Roxas next, and both of them froze. Naminé leaned forward just a touch, balancing on the tips of her toes. Roxas, by contrast, leaned back, recognition flashing in his eyes like gunfire. Noctis was a half second from making something of it when Eraqus spoke up.

“Your Majesty,” Eraqus greeted, lifting his head to level his gaze with Noctis. “My name is Eraqus. The three before you – Terra, Aqua and Roxas – are my students. We’ve come to you with information that may be key to the peril at hand.”

Noctis leaned back into the throne, resting his chin in his hand. 

“By peril, I’m going to assume you mean the daemons that’ve come back to ravage my kingdom?”

“They aren’t daemons,” Terra affirmed, eyes stony. “They’re something else entirely. Similar, though.”

Noctis’s gaze flickered back toward Naminé, who now seemed focused on the task at hand. Every so often, she still glanced back toward Roxas, who never seemed to catch her eye at the right time. She must have recognized him from somewhere. Even the mention of his name led to a change in her expression, away from the serious and into the investigative.

By contrast, Roxas wanted nothing to do with whatever mystery she was investigating in her head. Somehow, Noctis got the sense that he was trying his hardest not to look at her whatsoever.

“Their composition is a little different,” Noctis admitted, shrugging his shoulders. “If you’ve got proof to back that claim up, that’ll be a load off for me. If they aren’t daemons, then what are they?”

“They’re called Heartless… and thus far, we have succeeded only in killing them, not in capturing them,” Eraqus said.

Noctis frowned.

“So you’ve come here to brag, or…?”

“On the contrary — we have come to offer you what we know, in the hopes that we can work together to address the threat on the horizon. These pupils of mine all have the power to thwart the Heartless, whether they’re aware of it or not.”

Eraqus glanced toward Roxas.

His glare wasn’t a dagger. Daggers couldn’t pierce that far.

“The Heartless are drawn to light,” Eraqus explained, as if he’d given the same lecture a thousand times over. “Light like yours, and light like ours.”

Noctis shifted, his arm lowering to grip the throne.

“Light like yours? I don’t understand.”

Eraqus cleared his throat.

“My King, you were once a grand light… a flame in the dark, and now, you find yourself surrounded by a sea of fireflies.”

Eraqus extended his hand.

Terra and Aqua did the same.

Sheaths of light shimmered down the length of their arms and forged three, glittering Keyblades. Flecks of white clung to their ends and faded in the open air like sparks, some falling to the carpet below. There were no guards on either side of the throne to flinch, but Noctis showed no surprise.

“I see,” he muttered.

“Father, they’re just...”

Noctis raised a hand, silencing his daughter before she could speak her mind.

“My master speaks the truth, Your Highness,” Aqua reaffirmed. “Prompto Argentum’s son used to be one of those lights… and now, the dark’s taken him. None of us can find him, but with your help, we might have a way.”

When the King didn’t respond, Aqua continued.

“By capturing one of the Heartless, we can study them, and perhaps figure out a way to track them. If we can get that far, there might be a way to find where they’ve taken Ventus. We can get him back.”

“And the others who have gone missing,” Noctis mused, tapping at his chin with his thumb. For a moment, there was only silence. Roxas, a little late to the party, kept cocking his fingers back. Eraqus spared him a look and the boy stopped, evidently frustrated by something that Noctis couldn’t see.

Nevertheless, it was the King’s job to come to a decision. Caution in his eyes, he turned to his most trusted advisor for insight.

“Naminé, what do you think?”

“About what, Father?”

“If you were in my place, what would you do? Trust this man, or go your own way?”

Naminé considered that.

Her eyes traveled over the group. First Terra, the broad shouldered warrior who she still saw as a boy only a little older than herself. Then Aqua, whose regal bearing and stoic eyes did little to betray her thoughts. Eraqus was a mystery, though his posture showed no deception.

And then there was Roxas.

His blue eyes were finally fixed on her, narrowed with a determination that threatened to burn her through. He said nothing, but it was impossible to ignore the feeling radiating from those eyes of his — it was a declaration as much as it was a plea, to give him the strength he needed to find what he’d lost.

Who he lost.

“Trust them.” 

* * *

She found him in the gardens, sometime after Eraqus stole her father away to talk about matters of life and death. Terra followed the two of them at a comfortable distance, his silence joining theirs as if it might somehow fill the space words couldn’t. She walked comfortably along the stone stippled pathways that cut swathes through the greenery. Flowers of all sorts rose on every side, weeds to Roxas, treasures to the blonde girl and the lithe fingers that reached out to assess them every so often.

“So,” she began, tearing Roxas’s eyes away from the scenery with a word.

“Oh, uh, yeah,” he mumbled, turning away from her. She noticed, but didn’t comment on it. “Sorry. I spaced out. You were saying?”

It wasn’t like he was going to tell her that one of his best friends might’ve been low key stalking her. Whether or not Pence’s snooping counted as stalking was a conversation best saved for never.

“You seem to know me,” Naminé pointed out, joining him as they strolled through the gardens. “You recognised me, at the very least.”

Roxas merely shrugged.

His eyes trailed over the flower bushes in the gardens. During his travels via Chocobo, he had seen all sorts of flowers and shrubs. However, this was something completely different. It was a little strange seeing them so affectionately tended to.

“Xion’s told me a lot about you,” she added. “She talks about you a lot. You and her brother.”

“Lea?” he asked dumbly.

Naminé nodded.

“He’s a part of the Kingsglaive, you know,” she giggled. “So I’ve met him too. We seem to have a lot of mutual friends, if you think about it.”

Roxas hummed in agreement. 

“Xion, Lea, Terra…”

“I’m not really friends with Terra,” Roxas grumbled, stopping at the base of a gazebo. His fingers ran over the white marble of its leftmost pillar, and his eyes spanned the glass-and-steel ceiling. It was a modern marvel, a pastiche of times both ancient and upcoming. The Castle’s Greenhouse was a jewel, to be sure, but not one that left him feeling particularly comfortable. All the pomp and circumstance left him uneasy.

“Oh?”

“He beats me up sometimes,” Roxas joked, only a little indignant and entirely deadpan as his gaze found Naminé again. Standing outside of the gazebo’s shadow and clad entirely in white, her blonde hair spilled around her shoulders like golden ink. She was a word, written heavy handed from the end of some ancient pen, scrawled across a page and left to interpretation. What word it was, he couldn’t quite say. Familiarity, maybe, or distance. Whatever it was, one thought didn’t escape him.

“You look a lot like your mother.”

“So they say,” Naminé retreated, her eyes losing a little of their luster.

He didn’t comment on how flat his compliment landed. Instead, a hand ran rampant through his hair to find the back of his neck while he tried to find something else — something better — to say while she led the way back through the gardens.

“Right.”

After a moment, she came to a stop at the base of a large, unflowered bush. Fingers played against green edges, and ran over stems Roxas didn’t recognize. He didn’t know quite what they would be, but she seemed to.

“This is all pretty impressive,” he remarked. “The greenhouse, I mean. Do you like flowers, then? They’re, like, your thing?”

She gently cocked her head to the side.

“I do like them.”

Roxas’s eyes traveled hedgerow after planter, scanning for anything familiar to him. After a moment, he spied a gardener, working contentedly on a row of plants in the distance. He wore a large hat that covered him from the worst of the sun, though Roxas wasn’t sure what good that would do him indoors. His hair was a flamboyant pink, and his gentle demeanor was evident even from afar.

“That’s the gardener?”

“His name is Lauriam,” she explained. Careful to be inclusive, she gestured to the litany of other gardeners that he hadn’t noticed. Some lingered at azaleas, others with carnations. Lauriam himself seemed to be tending to strelitzia, a bank of orange buried in thrushes of green. “He and his staff are fairly new. Our previous gardener retired last year.”

“A friend of mine told me that, to work here, you need to be a part of the Kingsglaive,” Roxas muttered.

“He was, once.”

“Are you a part of the Kingsglaive?”

“I’m the princess,” she said, glancing back to him and continuing their journey.

“Right, but, like,” he fumbled, sounding frustrated. “Do you have, like...?”

“Are you asking if I have superpowers?”

Roxas stole a look at her from the side, carefully weighed his options, and then dove in like always.

“Yeah.”

“I can use magic,” she said, stressing the last two syllables. “In theory. I am my father’s daughter after all.”

“But you can’t use it normally?”

She paused at the thought, her fingers dallying over what might’ve been a lily one bush down.

“Not normally,” she decided.

Roxas didn’t have to think hard to figure out that her thoughts were elsewhere. There was something else on her mind, outside of the realm that he, Lauriam, and Terra now existed in. Careful, she advanced down the garden path. Roxas, unsure of what else to do, followed the dream-girl the whole way.

* * *

“Riku, no fair!” came Sora’s exasperated wail, accompanied by Riku’s victorious chuckle. Gesturing for Roxas to remain quiet, she led the two of them into the back garden where the two boys were still practising.

Cypress irises made contact with her icy blues. 

Riku pulled away from his friend to greet his cousin, as well as the blond-haired stranger next to her.

“Who’s your friend?” he inquired, jerking his head in Roxas’s direction.

Over to the left, Sora scrambled up off of the ground to muster up as chipper a greeting as he could. “Hi there!”

“This is Roxas. Uncle Prompto’s son,” Naminé introduced. Roxas responded with a nod.

Riku shoved his training blade beneath his arm and patted his gloves free of the dirt that he worked up putting Sora down seventeen — maybe eighteen — times in a row. He quirked his head to the side, examining Roxas in the same way that a scientist might examine a particularly uninteresting soil sample.

“Right,” Riku muttered. He extended a hand. “Prompto’s son. Nice to meet you.”

Roxas took a second to take it.

“Same,” he managed. “So you’re…?”

“Riku. The dope over my shoulder is Sora.”

Sora balked at that. He slapped Riku on the back and took Roxas’s hand next. With all three of them gathered in one place, Naminé couldn’t help but to stare from her position behind Roxas. Sora was so sunny that it made the two boys beside him look like thunderheads in an overcast sky. Riku, tall and comparatively brooding, kept trading glances back and forth between the silent blond at his front and the chattering brunet on his left.

For the most part, Sora was content to talk Roxas’s ear off. He asked him a sea of questions — and the answers flooded in quickly enough. Roxas didn’t look put off by Sora’s enthusiasm, but it seemed difficult for him to keep up with so much energy right in his face. Before Sora could solicit the entirety of Roxas’s life story, Riku cut in to the quick, a hand on his hip.

“So what brings you here, bird boy?”

Roxas didn’t look impressed.

“Something important,” he wryly stated. “Bet you know all about it.”

Naminé fixed him with a stiff glance.

Riku grinned, and he was about to retort when something in the air changed. Naminé noticed the tension growing in her cousin’s shoulders before she caught onto it herself. He stiffened, noticeably, and stepped back. His nose piqued toward the sky, and her brow furrowed in response. She was about to question it when the klaxons went off. Sirens, they blared over the castle grounds, screaming war and havoc.

The silver-haired boy shared a quick, troubled look with Sora, and then moved to jut by Roxas with a quick shove. Roxas was about two seconds from grabbing him by the scruff of the neck. The older boy took Naminé by the wrist and leaned down, shouting into her ear to be heard over the whining alarm.

“We have to go,” he announced.

“I’ve never heard the alarm go off before,” she tried to reply, her words drowned out by the sound.

Riku heard her all the same.

“Doesn’t matter, we have to go before…”

A gardener’s back came flying through the tinted glass wall that separated the garden from the greenhouse. He rolled to a stop, and Riku glanced up into the breach with clenched teeth.

From the gap, a sinewy black body came bursting through the glass. Roxas was the first to jump into action, stepping by Riku with a confident stride and hopping forward to meet it. He swung his left hand through the air, conjuring a wreath of light that rushed down the length of his arm as he lashed out. A shimmering, silver key formed an instant before impact, ripped through the monster’s torso and reduced it to twin clouds of smoke and shadow that vanished in the air around him.

The key’s shaft was long and shining, its guard a brilliant gold. Naminé didn’t have to look twice to know it as Sora’s. The boy on the other side of the room gaped, and then, tentative, flexed his fingers as Roxas turned.

“We have to…”

The key disappeared.

“Get out of…”

Then reappeared in Sora’s hand.

Roxas glanced down, then up to the boy on the other side of the room, whose eyes were now wide. Experimentally, he flexed his own fingers.

And the key vanished again, to materialize in the calloused hands of the surly blond farm boy.

“That’s…” Roxas muttered, shellshocked. Sora was enthusiastic, still, but equally befuddled. He stepped forward with a puzzled expression and Roxas moved forward to greet him, his arm halfway to swinging when Riku cut in to stop him with a hand to the chest.

“Figure it out later,” Riku frowned. “We’ve got to go. There are going to be more of those things out there.”

As if on cue, another shadow came leaping through the dark. Roxas, Keyblade still in hand, broke free to strike it down. Naminé retreated to take a place behind him, leaving Riku to stand in front of Sora.

“Sora, find the King,” Riku commanded, grabbing his friend by the shoulder. “Take Roxas with you.”

Riku stifled any objection from Roxas with a sharp glare. To his apparent surprise, the younger boy didn’t seem ready to raise any Cain over the issue.

“I’ll take Naminé.”

The sirens roared. Riku took Naminé’s hand. The four of them split off, Sora leading the way to the other side of the garden. Naminé watched him summon his key back, and she caught Roxas’s eyes as he spared her a look from across the courtyard. She wasn’t sure what to say — or how to tell him anything — until long after he disappeared into a corridor and out of sight.

With the Kingdom Key in Sora’s hand, Roxas was left to defend himself with a wooden training sword for what was hopefully the last time in his life. Sora, who was a perpetual ball of sunshine, tossed it to him almost conversationally as he cut through a thicket of dark monsters that sprang up at every corner. Part of him found the whole ordeal chafing, but something in him kept that thought from raising its head for too long.

Sora was annoying — even though he’d only known him for about five minutes — but he wore his heart on his sleeve in such a familiar way that it couldn’t bother Roxas. It was comforting, if frustrating.

“The King’s probably dealing with something like this too,” Sora grunted, chopping through a particularly large shadow and pivoting onto his strong foot. He held the Kingdom Key with both hands and a firm grip that Roxas thought overkill. It was like he was perpetually terrified to drop it. “So we oughta find him.”

“That’s what Riku said to do,” Roxas replied, shouting to be heard over the klaxon. Sora was lucky that he knew how to read lips. “Whatever we do, we should do it fast. I’m a sitting duck here.”

Sora considered that for all of six seconds before barreling down the hallway they found themselves in. Heartless sprung up to assail him, but he struck them all down like a gardener threshing weeds. Every so often, one sprung up at Roxas’s side, but he knocked them al toward Sora with a quick enough bonk that it didn’t seem to be a problem. His training was with a Keyblade, but a practice sword was decent enough for target practice.

More frustrating than the battle they now found themselves in the middle of and even the sirens blaring over the sound system was the thought that he was, once again, helpless in the face of danger.

He tried to take that anger out on every Heartless he could, but Sora was beating him to it.

The guy was a strike of lightning… and it was suddenly hard to fathom how he’d been the one on the ground when Roxas first met him. It was not, however, hard to understand how Riku was the one among them with a sneer of cold command. Didn’t make him any less annoying, though.

The two boys emerged from the maze of the castle’s extraneous hallways into a large, wide open entry hall. It looked remarkably similar to the one that led into the throne room, but with a much warmer color scheme. A singular, red carpet led the way through pillars of increasing size toward a door on the far side of the chamber. Statues of old, dead men lined each side, interwoven between rock and stone and dotted at the bottom with little, ancient-looking inscriptions. Some of them were in languages Roxas couldn’t read. Others were just too long to worry over.

Sora led their way forward, a little bit of sweat beading on his brow by the time they reached the large door on the far side. Most of the Heartless that they encountered up to that point were shadows… little, fluffy-looking monsters that only posed a threat in great numbers. Eraqus had been quick to tell Roxas about them.

Individually, they weren’t much to worry about, and so Roxas didn’t really feel the need to explain any of that to Sora… but the further they got, the more obvious it became that he had no idea what they were facing.

“I have no idea what these things are,” Sora said, somewhat obviously. “But they’re starting to get annoying. Why are there so many of them?”

“No idea,” Roxas said. “My master says that shadows usually spring up in groups of three or four. Not really like…”

“The ones we’ve been fighting?”

Roxas nodded. So far, Sora’d been cutting them down in groups of six or more at a time. Some of them were even far larger than the others, their empty eyes raised to the heights of men. Most, thankfully, were small. The difference was too dangerous to ignore though. Roxas wondered how on earth anyone without a Keyblade was supposed to cut through all that darkness.

“Is your friend going to be okay?”

“Naminé?”

“No, Riku! But her too!”

“Yeah, he’ll be fine,” Sora shouted back. “He’s pretty tough. He'll protect her!”

“I figured,” Roxas said, watching as Sora stepped through the double doors of the chamber and led them into what looked like an atrium. A great, glass ceiling spanned the heavens, revealing a pleasant sky and fluffy clouds. It was reflected in the tiled floor below; somehow, the hall they now belonged to was even bigger than the last. In it, only two statues waited, one of the currently reigning king — and one of his father, to his immediate left. The inscriptions beneath them were shorter than the rest, none shorter than King Regis’s.

“How many of these statues are there?” Roxas called out, frustrated.

“This is it, I think,” Sora answered. “The next room’s empty, and there’s a little passageway we can take. It cuts back to the throne room.”

With a sharp breath, Roxas afforded Sora just a little more credit than he had been up until that point. His ditziness wasn’t all there was to him… and maybe not every bit of his success was as accidental as it looked.

* * *

The King of Lucis had been enjoying some good tea when he looked out the window, urged by the waning sunlight, only to be greeted by glowing yellow orbs attached to black bodies.

As soon as darkness spilled into the room, Noctis and Eraqus were spurred into action.

The Heartless horde smashed their way in, the glass shattering into pieces as they did so. Eraqus had reacted within moments, calling upon his Keyblade. Noctis, with whatever power he had left, summoned his engine blade and began his assaults upon the daemon-like critters. The sharp side of his blade sliced through his enemies with ease, disintegrating into puffs of darkness.

There was no trail left behind, nothing bloody or inky to denote their existence. Not even a single piece of bone. These things clearly had no skeletons and yet, they still could maintain a form, but Noctis knew he should’ve known that when they melted into puddles of darkness to move around.

Taking a step back, he twisted his body to thwart a sneak attempt on his life.

“What’s happening?” 

“The gathering of Keyblade wielders,” Eraqus remarked. “If it’s just the four of us, it shouldn’t have been a problem, but it seems that a great deal of light has caught the Heartless’s attention.”

“And Sora.”

“Sora?”

“One of my pupils.”

“And you,” Eraqus pointed out. “Along with your daughter, that makes…”

He trailed off a moment, gaze leveling on Noctis like a sight.

“Seven guardians of light, blessed by your power.”

Before they could move for the door, a swarm of shadowy creatures sprang up from the floor to join them. Noctis watched as Eraqus took a step back and, with the tip of his keyblade pointed towards the door, a bright light emerged.

A clicking sound was heard and the door was under lock and key.

Within seconds, sirens blared throughout the hallways: the entire castle was under attack.

“I don’t know how long this will hold but I will need your help, Your Majesty. We will need to find a room with an incredible amount of light,” Noctis simmered deep in thought, despite his panic, before finally answering, “I know just the place, but we will need to make sure that every single person in this castle is accounted for.”

With a firm nod from the Keyblade Master, both Noctis and Eraqus zipped down the hallway in flashes of blue and gold. Shrieks and cries filled the castle like a broken symphony. One by one, those screams died away, either banished by the dark or calmed by the light that came to chase it away. Eraqus was no slouch, and though he couldn’t move as fast as Noctis could, he was never far behind.

His own power was unique, interesting.

Whereas Noctis could teleport by virtue of his lineage… he had no idea how Eraqus was managing to do the same. All he understood was that everywhere he went, he left behind little lanterns, fireflies to guard those stranded in their wake.

They cut their way to the throne room in minutes to find a number of civilians already gathered there. Gladiolus and a few of his guardsmen were already embroiled in battle, their blades cleaving through creature after creature to little effect. Every beast they slew came back angrier within the minute, claws bared again. The larger monsters were drawn to Gladiolus, while the smaller ones flocked to the soldiers on the frontline.

Noctis noted that before he dispersed them all with a wave of the hand.

A sea of blades flickered out from empty air, buried themselves in the back of the Heartless, and vanquished them all in short order. Gladiolus still managed to land the last blow, cutting down a large, four legged beast before Noctis’s blade could find the space between its shoulders.

The two rendezvoused beneath screeching sirens with little fanfare.

“Quite a day,” Gladiolus grunted. “You walk here?”

“Almost,” Noctis muttered wrly, glad Gladio probably couldn’t hear him.

The Kingshield didn’t look hurt… but he never did. His tree trunk arms were still holding tight to the same massive blade that Noctis remembered from decades ago, and his grizzled, bearded face wasn’t even touched by the sweat running down the faces of his men. If the Heartless attack bothered him, he was content not to show it.

“Where are the kids?”

“Probably on their way,” Noctis replied, shouting to be heard. “Riku knows what to do. He’s been drilled for this kind of thing.”

“And Terra is with them,” Gladiolus hollered. “Not too worried.”

Noctis fought back a laugh.

The sound of more fighting outside of the throne room stole all of their attention away. Eraqus was the first to move, his body fading into a whisper of light that soon stole Noctis too. Blue and gold ran like blood over the stony floor, cracked through the doors, and emerged into the main walk with a soft whirr. When both men rematerialized, Roxas and Sora were embroiled in battle against a flood of Heartless.

Some were large, but most were small and lithe, their bodies flying in an effort to catch one of the boys off guard. Sora was throwing himself left-to-right, batting down monsters like flies as best he could. Roxas’s gun was drawn, and rounds made of pure lightning were zipping through the crowd. Noctis raised his left hand as one of the monsters tore Sora down by the shoulder.

Roxas ducked at the last possible second, rolling toward Sora as a hail of blades tore through the Heartless crowd. He was at Sora’s side faster than Noctis could have been, and as the blades disappeared, the Heartless not long after. That left the three of them to crowd around the downed brunet and his key, which had fallen to the ground with a sharp clatter.

Noctis was the first to extend the boy a hand, reaching over Roxas’s shoulder to the dazed child beneath him.

“Sora!”

“All good,” Sora grumbled, taking the King’s hand and getting pulled to his feet.

“Can you still fight?”

“I think so,” he said, stretching his shoulder in its socket. “But I don’t think I can keep going forever.”

Eraqus was the only one still puzzled. Keyblade drawn, he regarded Roxas from a distance. Sora, casually, stabbed the point of the Kingdom Key toward the stone of the fountain at his feet. It made no mark, but he leaned up against it as if it were a railing.

“Where is your Keyblade?”

“I can’t use it,” Roxas grunted, holstering his father’s pistol. The silver of steel caught Noctis’s eye, and he turned to the two of them with a years-old uncertainty.

“You’ve used it before,” Noctis guessed, “haven’t you?”

“He has,” Eraqus answered.

Roxas, looking frustrated, flexed his fingers back.

Sora fell flat on his face, just as the Keyblade re-appeared in Roxas's hand.

“Oh,” Noctis whistled.

“Ah,” Eraqus managed, equally surprised. “I see.”

Roxas didn’t look amused.

“You’ve got an answer for this, old man?” he asked his master.

Eraqus shook his head in confusion.

“Unfortunately, I do not.”

“Well,” Noctis cut in, sounding a little urgent. “We’ve got about… twenty or thirty guardsmen and a good hundred or so civilians in the throne room that don’t really have time to wait for an answer.”

“Right,” Eraqus nodded.

“We need to address the source of this threat before it gets out of hand.”

“It’s already out of hand, isn’t it?” Roxas cut in, his words tinged with sarcasm and panic as he lunged in Noctis’s direction.

The king raised his blade, only to realise Roxas zipping past. When he turned, there was nothing left behind but a puddle of shadow.

It dawned upon him that he nearly had been ambushed. The boy had saved him from what might have been a possible kill. 

“Naminé’s with Riku right now,” Sora interjected. Roxas’s sword was within his hold, having succumbed to letting the other boy use it for the time being. “If there’s a lot of them, Riku won’t be able to handle them alone.”

Noctis nodded. Whether Ravus admitted it or not, he would slaughter Noctis if his son were hurt in any way or manner.

After all, Riku was his responsibility now.

“Let’s go find them. I know where they’re headed.”

* * *

As soon they reached their destination, a white blur flew into his arms.

“Luna,” he exhaled, relieved. His eyes darted around the room, taking in the individuals. His eyes landed on Isa and Aqua, but there was no sign of Terra.

There was no sign of both his nephew and daughter.

Panic gripped at his heart.

“Where's Naminé and Riku?”

“They have yet to arrive,” Isa replied, sparing the Keybladers a glance. Ignis stood next to him, with a hand on his shoulder. A forlorn expression was stuck to his face.

From the corner of his eye, he could see that Roxas bristling where he stood, grip tightening around the hilt of his weapon. It seemed that Isa’s attitude had rubbed someone the wrong way. It was a wonder that Sora was completely unaffected, maybe oblivious, to the blue-haired man’s iciness.

Just as he was about to turn around, a creak echoed throughout the room, accompanied by a distressed Terra.

“Riku’s headed towards the Crystal with the princess,” he informed them. “One of the walls caved in and we got separated.”

Before he could say anything, Sora had long bolted out the door. 

“Gladio,” he turned to his Shield. “Can you and Terra hold down the fort here? Eraqus here is familiar with the creatures. It’s prudent that I bring him along with me and someone needs to stay here to protect everyone else.”

Ignis’s children approached him. Aqua, with a burning resolution ablaze in her eyes, offered to join Gladiolus in holding down the fort. 

“Keep an eye on Roxas,” he murmured, leaning in close to Gladio. “Ask Luna to help out with that, if needed.”

After all, she was better with children than he was.

Taking a deep breath, he gestured for Eraqus to follow him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the late update. Hope this would suffice for the delay.


	7. Secrets Not Written

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The battle comes to a close, but the war is just beginning.

Sora couldn’t afford to slow down. If Riku fell, Naminé was defenceless.

The problem was that no matter where he went, there were Heartless straggling around every corner. The good thing was that they were chasing after him, instead of headed towards the throne room where the rest were gathered.

Every plodding step left him to wonder how Naminé managed to live in such a grand place all by herself. The pristine white walls he had seen were no longer intact. Shards of glass littered the floor, and it seemed that no matter where he went, there were huge chunks of rubble. Sunlight filtered through the broken windows, but it did little to chase the shadows away.

The brunet began to slow down as his ears picked up on the faint sound of heavy footsteps, getting louder and louder. He slid to a stop, just as a shimmering blue figure materialised in front of him. Not long after, while Sora was still protecting his face with a weary forearm, a shiver of golden light flickered to life to accompany them.

“King Noctis!” he cried out in surprise, just as the man gripped his shoulder.

Noctis looked good. He wasn’t hurt, but there was a thin sheen of sweat gathering against his forehead. Sora thought it looked a little like dew on a morning window. Noctis didn’t comment on Sora’s staring, or the way he drew closer with his arms outstretched.

“Next time, do not run off like that,” Noctis chided sternly, tugging the boy his wrist to lead him in the right direction. “Talcott would kill me if I let something happen to you.”

“But—”

“Perhaps we may discuss this later when it’s convenient,” Eraqus intervened with harried breath. “Not when your daughter and nephew’s lives are stake.”

“Bring us there, Your Majesty. Riku’s waiting. He’s useless without me,” Sora reaffirmed, hitting his fists with his chest. “Naminé’s waiting for us too.”

“Half of that is true,” Noctis wryly commented, leading the way. “The whole castle’s under siege. These things came out of nowhere.”

* * *

Tension lingered in the air. Whispered reassurances went about the people gathered in the throne room. The grandiose architecture dulled in the panic as everyone who could huddled in whatever corner they could find.

Aqua and Isa stood with their father. He was a little rugged and aged, but too well polished to be anyone else. Terra stood with his father too, both of them with their hands on their hips, looking nonchalant despite the chaos. From their burly builds to the way they scanned the room, eyes sharper than any hawk’s, the resemblance ran deep.

How Ven could have known the well put together adults scattered around the room was a total unknown.

Instead of joining the camaraderie, Roxas isolated himself from the rest of the group. A set of quiet, unspeaking eyes tracked his every step. Roxas could only speculate who they belonged to, but he could feel them boring into his shoulder blades all the same.

_Am I that unreliable?_

“Everything alright?” came the queen’s voice. Gentle and ever loving, so opposite of the mother he knew.

He didn’t know how to answer her.

“Nah,” he murmured, flushed with embarrassment at the fact that he was being consoled by none other than the queen. The intricate Lucian design on his gun was more fascinating than everything else around him.

Better to focus on an object rather than the chaos all around him and the eyes burrowing like bullets through his back.

He was not his father and neither was he his brother. He didn’t have the luxury to do something stupid.

“It’s okay to be scared.”

“I know that,” Roxas snapped, eyes flashing with anger and his grip tightened. A look of guilt followed afterwards when he realised who he was speaking to. Instead of apologizing, he flexed his fingers into fists and shook his head.

He wasn’t sure whether it was the situation or the accumulation of everything else stacked on top of it.

Breath hitched in his throat, Roxas stalked away from the Queen and her kind gaze, determined not to be consoled for a little while.

* * *

“About time, Uncle Noct!”

“Sorry we’re late,” was Noctis’s reply. He tossed his Engine Blade and within moments, he materialised next to Naminé, keeping his daughter close to him. Sora and Eraqus instantly joined Riku, hacking and slashing at the shadows threatening to overwhelm him.

A single glance at his nephew’s haggard form was enough to tell him Riku had been holding out for far too long. Naminé lingered near the Crystal; its light kept the Heartless at bay.

A quick lookover told him that his daughter was unharmed.

Eraqus let out a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding.

“The Crystal… it’s the heart of Insomnia.”

Naminé nodded.

“The Heartless,” she pointed to the creatures staggering beyond them. “They don’t dare to come within its vicinity.”

“The Crystal holds an insurmountable amount of light,” Eraqus explained, squinting his eyes. He sliced through a singular shadow. “It’s your best defense against the Heartless at this moment.”

“Sora, Master Eraqus, Riku,” Naminé called out. “Use the Keyblade!”

His head snapped at Naminé’s instruction… no, it was more of a command than anything else. With squared shoulders, her eyes portrayed a flame he recognized only from the annals of his past. Rain slicked waterways, foamy seas, the cry of the Hydraean — and the daggerlike glare of a woman who refused to give in.

The confusion that stopped him in his tracks had no effect on Talcott’s son. Sora charged forward, followed by the older man. Before Riku could join the fray, Noctis fenced him in with an outstretched arm and a fixing stare — a look that clearly screamed no.

Riku shrugged Noctis’s hand off and dove into battle once more, slicing through the Heartless with practiced ease.

Wrath sang in the King’s bloodstream but he kept it hidden underneath a stoic expression. Remembering what Naminé just mentioned, he kept an eye on the battle before him, one eye on his little girl.

A font of red drew like new breath from the chest of every vanquished Heartless, rising into the form of a heart that vanished with a whisper when they did.

Noctis tracked each one with his eyes, watching as they disintegrated in the air.

He was watching those fallen hearts when a round of gasps rang out. When Noctis turned around, he was stunned to see a gaping abyss rent in the air before the crystal. Rays of slanted light shimmered around its edges, coalescing into the form of a keyhole.

Suddenly, Naminé’s command made sense.

Riku and Eraqus charged further to the forefront, leaving Sora in the dust as they skillfully roughed up the Heartless, barely giving them a chance to retaliate.

It gave Sora enough time to do what his heart was telling him to do.

Sora lifted his Keyblade, as though it were a rehearsed motion, bringing its tip flush with the distant keyhole. A beam of light shot out and made its way towards the keyhole. A glowing ring rippled throughout the air as soon as it made contact and a click echoed throughout the room.

Within moments, everything was filled with a bright light. It disappeared as soon as it came, cleansing the entire place of the blighted beings. 

* * *

Long ago when peace prevailed, Noctis was foolish enough to believe that it’d last. Traces of darkness still lingered at the edges of their country, where people who believed that he should’ve died like a proper king instead of conquering the lands outside of his own.

They expected a king to fall to the ash, disintegrate into bone like his forefathers before him.

Those fools didn’t know the truth — how much Somnus kept hidden from their ancestors. Noctis wondered how they would react if they knew the sacrifices that was required in order for their city to flourish.

As soon as the five of them walked through the door, Lunafreya immediately swept both Riku and Naminé into a fierce hug. Sora lingered beside Noctis. From the corner of his eye, the boy swayed a little to the left and right.

He moved a little closer, just as the boy’s entire body slumped into him. Noctis’s hands grabbed him by the shoulder, but he felt Sora’s weight pulling him down to the cold marble floor.

“Sora, you okay?”

Sora laughed before he answered, “Yeah, I’m alright. Just wiped out.”

Gladiolus came to the rescue, gently helping the young man to his feet and, guiding him by the shoulders,he deposited him gently at the side of the throne room, giving Noctis time and space to examine his surroundings. Gladiolus raised a hand, gestured to Ignis to take his place while he brought Sora to one side.

Over his shoulder, Noctis took the time to scan the room once more and let go of a breath he hadn’t realised he had been holding: everyone that was accounted for was still there. Roxas was in a corner, engaged in conversation with seemingly no one until he spotted the phone in hand.

Looked like a family matter.

“Now I know how my dad felt,” Noctis admitted, feeling everything catching up to him. The ring that withered his father was archaic and no longer, but it seemed that the Lucis Caelum bloodline could never quite escape their fate. “Before Insomnia’s fall, I mean.”

“Most certainly so,” was Ignis’s reply. “It would’ve been inextricably worse back then.”

“Maybe,” Noctis mused. “Maybe not. I don’t even know what we’re dealing with.”

He didn’t know which situation was worse: the fact that his father knew what they were dealing with and still dove into it headfirst… or that they were dealing with an unknown enemy who had the capacity to appear anywhere and anytime.

He wished he could’ve chosen the middle road of neither.

“Missed calls from Talcott,” Ignis remarked. “Over Sora, I presume.”

Both Noctis and Gladiolus glanced at Sora’s unconscious form. He was only fourteen, but braver than most grown men. Noctis wasn’t sure he knew how.

Riku was faring a little better. It was thanks to him that those monsters hadn’t ripped Naminé to pieces. There were a few nicks here and there, scratches where Noctis would have preferred there to be none, but she looked none the worse for wear..

However, Noctis couldn’t quite shake how different his daughter seemed to be when around the Crystal.

Roxas, on the other hand, looked like a ball of nerves, just waiting to unfurl. Noctis observed the way his fingers traced the intricate design of the gun now in his hand. It looked remarkably familiar.

A tide of memories washed over him, filling him with a warmth he knew he could never quite get back. Prompto Argentum was the summer, burning bright and hot, leaving nothing behind but a scorch mark seared into his heart.

Noctis let his gaze linger on his daughter. The Kingsglaive had managed to make their way to the Crystal Room and, as a whole, everyone seemed safe. The situation was resolved, barring the look that lingered in his daughter’s eyes. That was a theorem he couldn’t resolve.

He knew better than to ask her for answers she couldn’t give.

Instead, he approached Eraqus.

The expert on Keyblades, presumably, and keyhole shaped voids.

“I’ve not seen a Keyhole in person before,” Eraqus began. “They typically seal in light, or create a barrier against the darkness. It makes sense that one might exist around the crystal, whose light powers the city, and whose presence must be kept clear of the darkness...”

“With that keyhole sealed, can the Heartless still get inside the city?”

“Yes, but it’ll be far more difficult now,” Eraqus mused with a sage nod. He glanced over at Naminé, around whom the rest gathered. “Your daughter may know more.”

Noctis shook his head and answered, “I don’t think she does. She gets her information from the history books. Those aren’t accurate.”

“How so?”

Noctis stared down his daughter from the back, eyes narrowed and mind racing. He didn’t know what she knew. He didn’t know how to find out.

“If you have a secret, a real secret, you should know better than to write it down.”


	8. Choices and Consequences

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Secrets are revealed and the consequences that follow it are anything but nice.

Eraqus spirited Roxas away not long after the first outbreak of trouble, taking the boy by train back to the mainland. That left King Noctis to deal with the tension that now settled like a fog over his capital. It also lingered on the shoulders of his staff, his retainers, and even his daughter — whose strange silence in the days following the Heartless attack was not unnoticed.

Naminé was not a subtle girl, no matter how hard she tried to be. She was unreadable, like her mother, but not subtle. Noctis didn’t know what storm was brewing in her heart; that didn’t mean he couldn’t see one there.

Nor did he find the signs of stress among his friends hard to miss. Gladiolus was still raging over his son’s sudden importance to someone other than the King. Ignis didn’t seem fettered by Aqua and her new, key-shaped weapon, but instead the responsibilities it bestowed upon her.

Somehow, Noctis was going to have to reconcile the doubts of every father in the palace before the end of the day.

Staring at himself in the mirror outside of Meeting Room No. 1, Noctis straightened his white tie and primped the folds of his pinstriped suit. It was crisp, never before worn, and identical to at least thirty-six other suits in his wardrobe. He wasn’t sure of the designer’s name, only the black and gold-printed label that lurked beneath the inside of his collar like a monster of its own.

His face was riddled with the shadow of stubble long since shaved, and there were lines where none used to be. He was older now than he was when he ended the war with Niflheim, more weathered by decades spent on the throne than his years on a battlefield.

Conquering a country full of daemons was easier than assuaging Gladiolus. Or risking getting that look from Ignis. 

When he finally stepped into the clear-walled meeting room, that label scratched at his back, irritated the skin through the cloth of his shirt, and left him with the inconsolable urge to scratch away the nerves building along every fiber of his being.

Years of royalty hadn’t led any of his anxieties away. He could face down a monster the size of a skyscraper without blinking. Dealing with angry constituents was somehow beyond him.

Even further beyond him when half of them were his friends.

Ignis and Gladiolus flanked the edges of his side of the table. Gladiolus’s fingers drummed impatiently on the edge of the wood, while Ignis’s were folded calmly in front of him. Neither looked happy. To Noctis’s immediate left and right, Naminé and Lunafreya waited in their respective seats. Lunafreya granted him a simple, reassuring smile that brought out the wrinkles in her eyes.

Somehow, they made her look prettier than the days before she got them. Noctis reminded her of that by resting his hand on her back while he sat down, squeezing gently on her shoulder, and then bringing that hand to hers as he finally turned to address the rest of the table.

Aqua and Terra were seated side by side, their expressions stone. Riku sat on Aqua’s left, with his arms folded and his legs up on the table. Sora, for once, was not there. He was a good boy, but he wasn’t royalty, and his presence was the start of every problem that now burdened the room.

“There are a few things that I’d like to address,” Ignis began. Gladiolus bristled next to him but the man did not say anything. “All I ask is for everything to be laid out on the table. Professionally.”

Aqua and Terra nodded.

“Professionally,” Gladiolus snorted. “My ass, professionally.”

Ignis spared him a sideways glance. Noctis knew he couldn’t see, but he didn’t need to in order to read his friend’s impatience.

“Together, you both represent a significant breach in security,” Ignis explained, adjusting in his chair. “By keeping your awareness of ‘Master Eraqus’s’ activities a secret amongst yourselves, you’ve exposed not only your king — but your countrymen to dangers that defy imagination.”

“We’re aware,” Terra answered, expression unchanging.

“Oh, believe me, we get that much,” Gladiolus cut in. “You were so chummy with that old man.”

Terra replied, “We’ve been training under him since we were kids.”

“Like that’s an excuse.”

“It’s not meant to be one.”

Terra and Gladiolus leveled their eyes on each other so sternly that the rest of the room didn’t need to exist.

Noctis turned to Riku.

“Riku, how long have you had a keyblade?”

“A while.”

“Does Ravus know?”

“Probably,” Riku shrugged, crossing his hands over his lap.

“He sent you here,” Noctis continued. “Was it because he knew Eraqus was coming?”

“Maybe.”

“You should answer the king,” Ignis replied.

“He isn’t my king,” Riku shot back, levelly. “And I don’t have any answers. Three months ago, I didn’t have a keyblade. Now I do. My father might know, he might not. It’s not like I show it off.”

Ignis went to reply, but Noctis raised a hand — and cleared his throat, remembering a fraction of a second too late that his friend wouldn’t see the gesture. Some things, he would never acclimate to.

“It doesn’t matter.”

Returning to the matter at hand, he glanced back to Terra and Aqua. Aqua looked no less steely than Terra, though she did seem considerably more calm. That, he figured, was the benefit of not being able to enter into a staredown with her father. Not that Ignis cared enough about machismo to be caught dead in one to begin with.

“Aqua, do you understand that your allegiance to Eraqus represents a significant breach in security?”

“I do,” she affirmed.

“Do you understand how that may be problematic, given your position as Crownsguard?”

“I do.”

Noctis glanced over to Gladiolus, whose arms were now crossed over his chest, and then to Ignis, who whispered something into the ear of one of his aides. The young man, a clean cut fellow with wild, windswept blue hair, jotted down a few notes. His name may have been Ienzo — Noctis wasn’t certain.

The issue was that, even if Aqua and Terra admitted their culpability, it wasn’t like they could be tried. There was no formal process for trying the Crownsguard, for one, and for two… their situation wasn’t exactly typical. A jury of laymen and peers weren’t privy to any of the information that could actually inform their decision. Noctis himself wasn’t certain of every motivating factor that led them to declare allegiance to Eraqus, but he didn’t feel their loyalty to another person a sin in itself.

He was a king, and he was their king, but he wasn’t a narcissist. Eraqus wasn’t leading a civil war. He was teaching two former teenagers how to wield weapons they didn’t understand.

At the end of the day, they were guilty only of keeping secrets.

Over the minutes that followed, Ignis played devil’s advocate by countering with the fact that they had breached castle security — and in technicality, broken their vows by doing so. Gladiolus agreed, but Noctis handwaved those concerns. He was the strongest man on the planet, as far as he knew.

There was no war, not anymore.

* * *

Galdin Quay was a lot further than Roxas expected it to be. It was about a two or three day journey by train, with the first third of that being the ride from Insomnia back to the mainland. As he and Eraqus passed through the city’s gates and soared together over the open ocean by rail, Roxas watched the gulls dip low over the sea and spread their wings toward the distant, blue sky.

For as far as the eye could see, there was nothing. No distant coastline, no nearby landmass. Just ocean, spread out like a blanket for miles and miles. Roxas pressed his face up to the glass of their compartment to get a better look, hoping to spy some distant island or some dark, deep sea creature ready to breach the surface.

The actual compartment was nice enough.

The seats were plush and red, and the overhead held their trunks without complaint. There were no places to sleep, other than the chairs, but he knew that the majority of their journey wouldn’t be by train. Instead, it was going to be painfully slow after the first third, the speed of their journey reduced by a need to travel on foot.

It was hard to believe that they’d ever find Ven, moving so slow.

He forced that thought out of his head. Doubt was the last thing he needed. Roxas promised his father that he’d bring Ven home, by hook or by crook.

Roxas, clad in a simple sweatshirt and a pair of his brother’s jeans, served as a stark contrast to the dour and formally dressed Eraqus. The old man was in his robes, like always, and held a simple, titleless book in his hands. He stared down at it while Roxas stared at him, trying to find answers in their silence.

“Where’re we’re headed?” Roxas asked.

Eraqus kept quiet for a bit.

“You’ll see,” he finally answered.

Roxas frowned.

“Or you could, y’know, tell me.”

“How well do you know Accordo?” Eraqus inquired.

“I don’t,” was Roxas’s disgruntled response.

For a moment, they sat in silence, Roxas with his face propped up on his fist and his eyes glued to the distant horizon. After some time, the sea grew more boring than the birds that dipped and dived across it, content to skim for fish that lurked just below the sparkling water.

When Eraqus recognized Roxas’s silence, he deigned to answer the boy’s question with a straightforward response.

“The Land of Departure is in Accordo,” he said.

“The front part, or the back part?”

“The ‘back part,’” Eraqus answered, barely hiding his bemusement. “The archipelago on the far west tip.”

“So why are we going through Galdin Quay instead of, like, Cape Caem? I’m sure the King would have loaned us a boat,” Roxas said, his nose wrinkling.

“Imposing upon his hospitality seemed unwise.”

Roxas wagered that was true. Drawing away from the window, he rubbed at the sides of his arms. Even covered by the sleeves of his hoodie, they felt cold. Ever since meeting Sora, they felt that way — cold, or maybe just not warm enough. The kid was a bundle of sunshine, and his willingness to work with Roxas only seconds after meeting him was frustratingly familiar.

“Why can’t I use my Keyblade around Sora?”

“It’s possible that his heart is connected to yours in some way,” Eraqus mused, turning the page of the book in his hands. “Or that his heart fills yours with doubt.”

“His Keyblade looks the same as mine,” Roxas thought aloud.

“It does,” Eraqus affirmed. “It seems to be the same key.”

“How’s that possible?”

It took a while for Eraqus to respond. His fingers scanned the page of the book he was reading until they came to the end of what might’ve been a lengthy passage. It felt like he was looking for any excuse not to make eye contact. Roxas wondered if his book contained the advice he needed for that, but he doubted it.

“There are any number of explanations, but the simplest is also the least likely to be possible,” he explained.

“How so?”

“Have you ever met Sora before?”

“No,” Roxas answered, pointblank, and understood what Eraqus was getting at.

“It’s also possible that you haven’t yet awoken your true Keyblade,” the old master suggested. “Or that further power lurks within you.”

“What, like I’ve been holding back somehow?”

“No, that you’ve been held back,” Eraqus said. “The distinction is important.”

When Roxas didn’t reply, the old man continued.

“When you awaken a Keyblade, you must make a sacrifice, or, if it’s easier to think of, a bargain. You trade that power for something until you make that power your own… though some are capable of awakening their Keyblades without sacrificing anything.”

“What did Ven sacrifice?”

“I’m not at liberty to say… but if your Keyblade hasn’t yet been awakened, it might be more helpful to think of it as a placeholder,” he answered.

“A placeholder?”

“Something meant to loan you power until you find a cause worth sacrificing for. There have never been so many Keyblade wielders at once; for a long time, I considered myself the only one… and the lore on it that I have access to was not simple to track down.”

“So there’s a lot you don’t know?”

“I don’t think of it that way,” Eraqus responded quietly, folding his book on his lap. “I consider it more that there is a lot we must learn together. Ventus understood that well.”

Roxas leaned back in his seat, arms crossed over his chest.

“Did Ven have that Keyblade too?”

“No. His was known as Wayward Wind. It was quite the opposite of yours; nontraditional, with a reverse grip.” “Nontraditional,” Roxas muttered. “Sounds like Ven.”

“As you gain power, you may find that your Keyblade changes form. We’ll confirm our theory if that happens.”

“So why would I start out with a different Keyblade than Ven or Terra did? He didn’t seem to recognize it either.”

The train bumbled along the tracks while Eraqus shifted in his seat, adjusting so that he could more comfortably answer the onslaught of questions being rained down on him by Roxas’s latent curiosity.

“It’s possible that your power stems from a place unlike their own. Terra knew what he wanted from the start, as did Aqua… and they earned that power with no outside assistance. They awakened to it on their own, and then came to me for guidance on how to properly use it,” Eraqus said.

“Terra said my power was my own,” Roxas shot back.

“Yes, but it was your bond with Ventus that allowed you to activate it. The truth we have to face is that the power you’ve earned so far is only a fraction of the power you’re capable of wielding.”

Roxas felt the color rush to his cheeks. When he looked down at his hands, he could feel them tingling, begging to be kneaded into knuckles. Eraqus didn’t feel wrong. Roxas could tell that much. There was more power brimming inside of him… and the more of it he found out how to use, the more he felt there had to be.

“Is that why you’re training me? To see how strong I can be?”

“No,” Eraqus answered, without even a shred of doubt.

“I, too, want to find Ventus. He was dear to me,” he continued, voice low. “Like a son. All of my apprentices are. You are too, though I don’t know you quite so well. It’s my duty to make sure that you can face the world ahead, and the darknesses that threaten it.”

“Oh,” Roxas replied. He didn’t know what else to say.

“Together, I believe we can find your brother. To do that, we’ll need to head back to the Land of Departure. There’s the chance that he returned there, to seek me out… or to hide.”

“Is someone chasing him?”

“I believe that to be the case,” Eraqus answered. “He may need our help… and if he were being followed, I don’t believe he would take the traditional route afforded by the coasts of Niflheim. Instead, he would journey through the mountains and mines to the south.”

“So he would head to Galdin Quay,” Roxas concluded. “I guess it’s true that there are a ton of people there, too. So it’s not like someone could just start a fight with him once he got there.”

“Correct. Your brother may be a pleasant boy, but he’s quite adept with his Keyblade. Terra may be stronger, but Ventus is far faster and wittier than he or Aqua will ever be. I don’t see that being likely to change.”

That left Roxas with a shred of hope.

Ventus wasn’t dead… he was just playing dead, laying low. So he was out there somewhere, down, but not out. If he and Eraqus could follow in his footsteps, or find even a trace of him… there was hope yet that he might be brought back home, and that Prompto Argentum wouldn’t have to face another loss like the one that ruined their family the first time.

* * *

Two hours after it began, Noctis’s reconciliation meeting hadn’t made much progress. Gladiolus was still frustrated to hear about his son’s deception. Ignis wasn’t happy that his daughter had become a flight risk. Riku wasn’t cooperating, and Naminé didn’t have any information for them that might have explained anything of use. When the time came for dinner to be delivered, Noctis dismissed his wife and daughter, as well as a majority of the staff, so that he could get to the bottom of the issue on his own.

That left him with an angry Gladio, an absolutely aloof Ignis, a fuming Terra, Aqua, and a bored-beyond-words Riku.

Noctis ran a hand through his hair as he summarized the boiling point at hand one by one, determined to find something to end their parley on before Gladiolus punched his son in the face during an official meeting.

“The issue here isn’t that you two lied,” he explained. “I don’t care what you do when you’re not at the castle. What I think doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’ve created a security risk. Your positions and your dedication to them have been compromised.”

“Our positions aren’t compromised,” Terra replied, coolly.

“Have you ever taken time away from your duties to train under Eraqus?”

The second burliest Amicitia rapped his knuckles on the table, but said nothing in reply. Noctis knew he had his answer from Terra, and looked to Aqua.

“Of course I have,” she responded. “That’s not unusual. We all have hobbies — activities we do on our own time. By submitting a formal vacation request, we make that time our own. It isn’t against the rules to take a break.”

“What you’re doing isn’t taking a break,” Ignis cut in. “Not in this business. When you leave the crown unguarded, you’re creating a gap in security that otherwise wouldn’t exist. You’re weakening us.”

“We’re not doing anything wrong,” Terra responded. “There’s only one threat out there and it’s going to destroy us all if we don’t prepare for it. The King can’t protect us forever. Not against this.”

“Against what, precisely?”

“The Heartless.”

“And the Heartless are…?”

“Darkness. The monsters you already knew about, but can’t stop. The only way to defeat them is to master the power we’ve been given,” Terra explained, voice solid. “If anyone knows that, it should be him.”

It didn’t take a detective for Noctis to understand his name had been invoked, albeit indirectly.

“I’m not saying you’re not doing something helpful,” he leveled. “It’s not the action you’re taking. It’s the way you’re taking that action. If Ignis submits a vacation request, he tells me where he’s going. He doesn’t lie to me and say he’s hiking in the hills when he’s really going somewhere else.”

Terra didn’t have a response for that. Neither did Aqua. Noctis leaned forward, tenting both hands together.

“My father would have exiled the both of you. Put you out of the city’s walls, left you to fend for yourselves against Niflheim or become hunters.”

They both stared at him. Ignis’s fingers knit against the table’s edge. Gladiolus leaned forward, elbows firm against the table’s face.

“Now, that punishment is hardly a threat,” Gladiolus mentioned. “There’s no real Niflheim anymore. What’s left is a tourist spot and a bunch of bombed out old churches. And the wilds outside of the city are just as bad. Duscae’s got lakefront beaches now.”

“I thought you would want me to get stronger,” Terra retorted, his words a rifle sight.

“On your own,” Gladiolus replied, just as dour.

Noctis bumped his pinkies against the table’s surface, and glanced over to his two remaining advisors. His eyes were warnings — to hold anything but a careful consideration in.

“What do you propose we do?”

“Your father would have exiled them,” Ignis concurred. “As would the kings of the past. I see no reason to deviate from that. A temporary exile for a period of five years, during which they be disbarred from their current positions and suffer the loss of their titles.”

“Gladio?”

“It’s not enough,” he said, one hand falling off the table as he leaned back in his chair. “Prison. Same duration. They need to understand that the risk they took could have exposed you to serious danger.”

Noctis frowned at that.

He glanced toward the clear barriers that separated him from the rest of the castle. He could see desks, offices, work spaces spread out like islands throughout the room. Under his reign, Insomnia had not just flourished, but led the world in modernizing society. It was a music box made of gemstone, but sometimes it felt broken. Hard to manage, with pieces missing he’d never track town.

It wasn’t hard to understand why Terra and Aqua hadn’t come to him about their training under Eraqus. They thought they were doing the right thing, and while Gladiolus didn’t care about that, Noctis did. The issue was that they still needed punishment, to understand the risks they took in full scope. While Ignis valued his father’s wisdom there, Noctis didn’t.

And so both of the advisors who he cherished so much were useless when he needed them most.

He made eye contact with Riku, who was resting his cheek on his fist like a boy stuck in a grade school classroom. Never had a King empathized so much with a teenager.

“I don’t care about any of this,” he finally realized aloud.

“A precedent should be set… but there are no precedents for this that matter,” Noctis continued, rising to his feet. “Terra, Aqua. You’re not being exiled, and you’re not being sent to prison.”

“Noct, you’ve lost your mind,” Gladiolus spat, spinning in his chair to face his king.

“Instead, you’ll be assigned to my personal guard detail. Both of you will be replacing my current guardian and his aides. Shifts will span twelve hours, alternating. No days off, no time off, no formal vacation requests.”

Then, glancing back to Riku, Noctis pointed toward Terra.

“This man will train you now. After his shift of guard duty ends — in the mornings — he’ll train you for three hours.”

Now turning to Aqua, the King dispensed a different punishment for her.

“Your auxiliary duty will be in the library. Take Sora and my daughter, find something that’ll be of use to us. I don’t pay millions of gil a year to upkeep a library I never get use out of.”

Aqua frowned, but she didn’t voice an objection. “Am I to train Sora, then?”

“If you want. Until you fix the issue he’s having with his weapon, I don’t want him training with Riku.”

The boy in question bolted upright in his seat.

“Wait, I’m being punished?”

“No,” Noctis responded, lifting a steady hand. “His weapon takes that other boy’s away. I’m not going to endanger him if I can’t help it.”

“We were fighting with wooden swords before,” Riku protested.

“And now that he knows you can summon a Keyblade, that’ll never be enough for him,” Noctis reasoned. 

“This feels lenient,” Gladiolus grunted, still fuming.

“I don’t remember asking for that opinion,” Noctis shot back.

Ignis snorted through his nose and adjusted his glasses.

“You have been telling him to be more assertive,” he remarked.

“I meant with his wife and daughter, not my children.”

“They’re all my children,” Noctis interjected. “Yours. His. Ravus’s, if he’s under my care. I’m not going to send a child to a labor camp, but if they need discipline I’m not going to give them a vacation either.”

Noctis adjusted his lapel and the buttons on his blazer, studying them for a long moment. When Gladiolus voiced no further protests, the king turned to Terra and Aqua, who looked concerned… but unfettered otherwise.

“Any questions?”

When they voiced none, the King nodded.

“Then we’re done here,” he concluded, turning to Ignis.

“Except you. I’ve got business with you.”


	9. Darker Still

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Roxas and Eraqus explore a detour...

Noctis watched at the rest of the room’s occupants filed out of the room in a fairly orderly manner. The last person to leave the room was Naminé, who offered her father a smile before heading to do whatever she needed to do: be a princess.

“How do you expect the young man to train if he is unable to wield what he is capable of?” Ignis asked, once the rest of the room was empty and devoid of any humans.

Noctis remained quiet for a moment.

“You knew about Aqua, didn’t you?” 

Ignis said nothing but Noctis knew that this particular sort of knowing silence meant yes. 

“I’m surprised that you…”

“I’ve learned over the years that it is easier to let children make their own decisions,” Ignis responded. “If I were to restrict them, they’re bound to find other ways to escape their responsibilities.”

“They can’t be as rambunctious as Prompto and I, can they?” Noctis remarked, letting out a chuckle.

“They certainly are not,” Ignis agreed. “I did inform that choices come with consequences and the consequences are not within their control.”

“... but knowing you, you certainly did express disapproval before?” Noctis inquired once again, raising an eyebrow.

Ignis nodded, slowly but surely. 

“I don’t quite approve but I do know my daughter: whatever reason she had, it was for a very good reason. She wouldn’t do anything that I highly disagree with.”

Noctis couldn’t help but chortle.

* * *

The journey toward Galdin Quay was maybe a quarter of the way over. It took them half a day by train to reach the end of the desert, and another half a day by bird to travel down the highway that led south. A majority of the road was empty of everything but scenery and sky until just outside of Balouve, where the green swamplands of Duscae turned into a series of neutral marshes.

Fireflies roamed the fields and flitted through the trees by the time Roxas and his new “master” made their camp. They came and went, communing with the croaking frogs and the chirping crickets.

Huddled around a campfire with the birds in the dark, Roxas couldn’t imagine his brother having ever done the same. He couldn’t see messy Ventus sharing a campsite with the too-clean Eraqus, whose boots barely tracked any moss and didn’t knock off so much as a speck of dirt when they fell.

“The Chocobos are tiring out,” Roxas announced, ruffling his bird’s feathers. “We’ve been running them too hard. Probably can’t take them much further.”

“There’s a mining town not much further down the road,” Eraqus suggested aloud, carefully sipping at a bland white thermos with a black cap.

The sun fell, disappearing behind the mountains to leave vestiges of pink, red and orange that spilled to fill the gap it left behind. Midnight blue bled at its edges, seeping into the sky like watercolour, painting the heavens with a beauty so exquisite that no matter what day it was its audience of gently chirping crickets could only applaud the work of nature.

Roxas always found nature impressive; he was certain that Eraqus would agree with him. Despite his sternness, he could see how the old master got along well with his brother. Eraqus was a basin, meant to contain all of the excess energy Ven through off in his day-to-day and put it to good use. He gave Ven’s energy purpose, and though it took a while for Roxas to see that, it was starting to make sense.

“We’ll camp here for the night,” Eraqus decided, gesturing to the log beside him. Roxas made sure the birds were tied down and took a seat. He reached for the thermos at his hip while Eraqus scooted over to make room, his eyes glued to the fire.

“What’ll we do with the birds?”

“We acquired them from a ranch… and we’ll deposit them at one,” Eraqus said. “It makes the most sense to place them in the care of someone who will cherish their presence.”

He was also unusually caring. Despite his stern demeanor, he couldn’t imagine Eraqus would ever have left the birds to run on their own in the wild. Roxas nodded, took a drink of water, and kept that in mind as they made small talk into the night.

They traded a few stories back and forth. Roxas told him about how Ven used to lose himself in the woods, coming home with a litany of little scrapes and bruises and new, froggy friends with wild names. Eraqus relayed one or two tales of Terra having done the same. Even Aqua, who he assured Roxas was the smartest woman he’d ever met, didn’t start off knowing how to prep a campsite. Ven could at least do that, the old master asserted, something that he attributed to Prompto’s care.

Roxas fell asleep first, head slumped against his jacket and his jacket bundled up against the log at Eraqus’s feet. When he awoke, the old man was already awake, their things already packed.

Halfway down the highway to Galdin Quay was the mining town of Balouve.

Roxas had never been, but he knew a little about it. It was the biggest town he’d been to other than Insomnia. Once a ghost town left behind by the decline of the old empire, it was once against a bustling city full of diners and neon lights that burned through the dim blue haze of the early dawn. By the time Roxas and Eraqus made their way beyond the stables outside of the city’s edge, the streetlights were ready to click off and the sun was starting to climb through the sky.

The two of them made their way through the outskirts of the city on foot. Passing through the large, concrete gates that separated it from the hilly marshes outside, Roxas felt a little like a drop in the bucket. The last time he’d come to Balouve, he’d been with his father on a delivery. Now, he was on his way to the most beloved vacation destination in the Kingdom to catch a boat to the middle of nowhere.

About a third of the way in, just when Roxas thought Eraqus might take mercy upon them and hail a cab, the peppery old master sat them down on the terrace of The Secondhand, a battered looking cafe that afforded them a beautiful view of the street and did nothing at all to shield them from the wind of oncoming traffic.

Eraqus took a coffee, black, and Roxas took advantage of his master’s hospitality by ordering the biggest breakfast sandwich he’d ever seen. It boasted a wealth of bacon, sausage, egg, and a smattering of onion-y potatoes drizzled over its toasty top — but it tasted pretty much like grease and chewed like wet cardboard in his mouth. Even his water tasted a little like metal.

His nose was wrinkling over it when Eraqus broached the subject of Ventus again.

“Your brother would have passed through here,” he said.

“Really?”

“I believe so,” Eraqus mused, brushing a little coffee from his upper lip. “The path he would have followed south must have been very direct. He would have been on foot, to attract less attention… which means he would have inevitably passed through Balouve.”

“That’s because of the mines,” Roxas assumed.

“Yes, they surround the city on all sides. They were once much smaller, during the days of the war, but they’ve expanded as travel has refinanced the city.”

Roxas nodded and took a bite of his incredibly underwhelming sandwich.

“So he’d have passed through here for sure,” the boy reasoned. “Do you think he’d still be here?”

“No, your brother never was good at staying put.”

“And you think he’s being followed, don’t you?”

“It’s incredibly likely,” Eraqus replied. “The evidence available to me suggests that something may be hunting your brother. It’s possible that they naively believe they might be able to take his key from him.”

Roxas didn’t comment on the guilt that must’ve left the old man across from him. He could see it just as easily as Eraqus could his own reflection in the surface of his coffee. When he didn’t reply immediately, Eraqus went on.

“Assuming that he’s looking to find me in the Land of Departure, his best route home leads him through the Quay,” he said. “An economy ticket from the Quay would get him there not long before we’ll arrive, a few days behind him.”

“He’s not gonna leave when he sees you aren’t there?”

“No. The Land of Departure is protected by a spell of mine,” Eraqus explained. “So long as he’s there, whoever’s following him won’t be able to track him beyond its borders. He’s safest there.”

Roxas nodded, but one question still nagged at him.

“So why did you leave at all then?”

Eraqus took a moment. He swilled the coffee in his cup, glanced toward the street, and then placed his cup down on the table. Roxas couldn’t tell if he was giving him the cold shoulder or just thinking until he opened his mouth to reply.

“For all my patience, I’m still a human. I worry about my students, as anyone would. If Ventus were in danger and my being there could make a difference, I’d like to provide him that edge,” Eraqus said.

Roxas understood that.

“He might’ve have turned around the moment he realized he was being followed to protect you and your father,” the older man finished, fixing his eyes on Roxas. After what felt like a painful and awkward silence, he rose from his seat.

“We should continue. Once we reach the quay, it’s possible that we may charter a faster vessel than the one your brother would have taken. The sooner we arrive, the better things will be for him.”

The walk to the other side of town was mercifully brief. Balouve was a lot bigger than Roxas remembered, but its streets were simple to follow. Unlike the chaotic and sprawling Insomnia, the majority of the city was laid out around the highway like a tourist across a beach towel. Two, great wings spread east and west toward the sea and mountains, with little feathers that expanded down south toward the quay.

The majority of their walk was uneventful, and as the sun raced across the sky toward the other end of the horizon, Roxas was beginning to think that they were going to make it to the other side of town without so much as a single stop.

At least, until they ran into a literal road block.

Set up on the town’s southern edge were about a dozen police cruisers, a hundred barricades, and a literal border made of yellow caution tape. Roxas squinted at the sight of it. A shiver of cold nostalgia snuck down his spine as the two Keybearers drew closer.

The last time he’d seen something like that…

Roxas let Eraqus approach the barrier, choosing to hang back instead of throw himself face first into it. His master conversed with a police officer on the other side of the caution tape for what felt like an eternity, and when he finally came back, his face looked a little less perfect than before. Instead of the blank, serene expression Eraqus usually wore, he was frowning.

Not the usual kind of disappointed frown, either — it was something else, more like disappointment and concern than any actual discomfort.

“What’s going on?”

“The mine shaft that borders the highway has collapsed,” Eraqus explained. “Rather, the entrance has. Damage extends to the roadway. No one is to be allowed along that stretch of road until the obstruction blocking the mine’s entrance has been cleared.”

“So what, the highway’s off limits?”

“For the time being.”

Roxas peered around Eraqus to gaze at the distant cordon.

“Well, we’re not turning around.”

Eraqus turned to follow Roxas’s look. His eyes followed the cordon across the road and toward the hills, where the city’s massive walls vanished into the side of a large, rocky butte. Along the top of the wall were a series of lesser facilities, and somewhere over the distant hill a loom of black smoke unspooled across the sky. Roxas supposed it might have been another mine.

“There may be another way in.”

Together, the two made their way away from the main road and followed the city’s wall toward the hillside. Eraqus led them over a small rise or two, through a small and brambling wood, and then to the spot where the hillside and the wall met. 

At first, Roxas thought the old man’s plan was a dud. Then, as the two of them surveyed the wall, Roxas glanced to the south, where there was no cordon. Far off toward the horizon, the hill shrank, and he could see a thin, lumpy path that led both south and up toward the sky.

“There,” Eraqus pointed out, hardly a second before Roxas could open his mouth.

Proud but a little sour (he’d totally spotted it first), Roxas led them down toward the dirt road that rose into the hillside. After about ten more minutes it spun, veered off right, and sank down a small rise that led toward a rocky crevasse. Roxas watched it wind off toward an unmarked hole in the rock, which he pointed out to Eraqus long before the old man could’ve seen it himself.

Tire tracks marred the dirt on the way there like scars, and even carved off another makeshift road that led in the direction of the cordon.

“Must be an offshoot,” Roxas asserted.

“Or an exit,” Eraqus suggested. “Though for us, it’ll function well enough as an entrance.”

“We’re going in?”

“The mines in this area have exits that lead toward the quay. If we follow the tunnels, we may find a way to the other side… I know these mines quite well. I explored them once, in my youth.”

“And?”

“It’s possible that the collapse is related to your brother’s disappearance,” Eraqus said.

“You mean that the person following him could’ve caved the main shaft in?”

“I sense a great darkness further ahead.”

“A great darkness?”

“That is, unfortunately, all I know.”

Roxas stared into the entrance of the mine as the sun coasted over the horizon, its honey edges dipping like a bumblebee to cast the valley in black stripes of shadow. He swallowed back a little fear and followed Eraqus into the dark.

He wished his father was here with him.

After drawing a flashlight from the pack on his back, Roxas and Eraqus breached the mineshaft’s entrance with little fanfare. Props of wood marked their way, covered in dust and years of grime. Some of them functioned as makeshift signs, their points coal-marred.

A number of the lesser, more derivative shafts were unplumbed, marked off by caution tape, or arbitrarily unlit. Roxas peered down a few of them whenever he got the chance.

“You’re quite interested in this place,” Eraqus mused aloud, as Roxas stopped to kneel beside a dusted old crate. Its surface was well weathered, the top left corner blown out. It looked as if it’d been clawed through.

Roxas shrugged. “I guess.”

The two of them moved on, advancing south in tune with the compass in Eraqus’s hand. Whereas Roxas needed a torch to light the way, Eraqus settled for putting off a glow of his own. Warm light bled off of his closed hand like paint, splattering the brown-black walls in strips of fuzzy gold.

The heavy, damp air reminded Roxas a lot of home.

Duscae was a swampy, muggy place. That was enough to turn a lot of people away. For Roxas, though, it was home. It never got cold in the winter and the fireflies came out in the summer. Frogs croaked, birds sang, and the people were kind. Stuffed down a mineshaft with an old man that definitely wasn’t his father, he couldn’t help but miss the simpler days.

Camping with dad, sharing some time out on the lake. Spreading out on a bedroll under a spool of stars and watching the leaves crash together across the forest canopy. Ven was always way better at handling the hard parts of camping. He could set a campsite up, get the fire going, manage the tents… Roxas was better at cleaning it all up.

He didn’t feel the same sort of teamwork with his dad, but it wasn’t hard to tell that Ven got it all from him.

Dad took Ven camping way more than he ever did Roxas, who preferred to stay at home whenever he got the chance. Now, advancing through the pitch black with Eraqus, he was starting to wish that he’d taken his old man up on a few more of those offers.

The further they delved, the weaker his flashlight felt. He smacked its butt and jiggled the batteries, but no matter how hard he hit it the dark kept cutting it shorter and shorter. It was like a candle burnt down to the wick by the time Eraqus took the lead, extending his light so that it covered the both of them with ease.

“You could’ve done that the whole time?”

“You never thought to ask.”

The two of them traveled for an hour and a half before they came to a massive opening, where their little off-shoot shaft joined up with the main tunnel. Roxas glanced to Eraqus and waited for him to pick their path. For a moment, the old man said nothing. He inhaled sharply, closed his eyes, and crossed his arms. Just when Roxas thought he might finally come to a conclusion, the old man cleared his throat and glanced pointedly over to his young and very unimpressed companion.

“You said you knew the mines,” Roxas deadpanned.

“I said I knew of the mines,” came Eraqus’s curt response.

After a long pause, Eraqus continued. “In that case, this appears to be where we’ll part ways. You take the leftmost route. I’ll follow the right. Whoever makes it to the end first will set up camp for the evening.”

“Wow,” Roxas groaned. “What an awesome prize.”

After a quick eyeroll, the teen stowed his dead flashlight in his bag and turned to Eraqus before he could set off. “I’m gonna need something to help me along here.”

Eraqus extended his hand and Roxas took it without a word. For a moment, nothing happened. The piercing sound of silence overrode their breathing until the hum of Eraqus’s power rose to drown it out. Little strings of light wormed their way around Roxas’s hand and filtered toward the checkered band around his wrist. Roxas’s gaze narrowed as the light coagulated there, massed like water over his little keepsake, and then shed off a ray of glittering white light that was just as bright as Eraqus’s.

Even when he pulled away, its light still cut easily through the dark. He played around with it for a second, pointing it left and right, testing out his aim while he had the chance to dicker around.

“Cool,” he whistled. “This is so cool.”

“You’re quite welcome,” Eraqus replied.

“How do I turn it off?”

“Do you already wish to?”

“No, just… if I need to.”

“Focus on it and will it to stop glowing,” Eraqus said. “And to make it glow, simply do the opposite. My light will return to you when you need it.”

Roxas glanced down at the wristband and nodded appreciatively.

“Thanks, old man.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Don’t be old.”

Eraqus inhaled sharply and set off down the right hand path, leaving Roxas to laugh on his own until his elder’s back disappeared around a bend. When he was fully out of sight, the boy turned and set off, following the tunnel and pointing his new, fledgeling light at everything even remotely interesting that he passed by. 

It wasn’t until he stumbled across a makeshift campsite ripped to shreds that he started to worry.

He found it at a point where the shaft blunted to the start of a cave in — which he figured led to the emergency cordon they saw earlier in the day. A simple spindle table’s face was ripped off, the satellite array of chairs around it torn to splinters. Roxas knelt at the table’s knot, where a wealth of long, menacing claw marks dug deep into the cable.

A burnt out lantern lingered on the floor beside the table, long cold. Roxas picked up a shard of glass in his free hand and turned it over. As if it might give him an answer.

There was no blood anywhere, but he saw a set of footprints running off in the direction he was already headed. Their path was marred by what looked like pawprints, easily bigger than any he’d ever seen. Along the walls were a series of deep, sharp cuts completely unlike the ones that split the table.

“Magic, maybe,” he muttered.

He got the feeling that whatever caused the cave in must’ve lurked further ahead. Part of him wanted to turn back and chase after Eraqus, to let him know… but that didn’t feel like the right call. Not when he knew they were chasing Ventus, the biggest trouble magnet he knew. Casting a glance over his shoulder, Roxas extended his dull hand and cocked his fingers back.

A silver and gold key — what Eraqus called the Kingdom Key — flickered to life in his fingertips. Its familiar chain glittered in the light cast off by his lit hand, and jangled when he gave his weapon a test swipe.

It didn’t disappear after two seconds, so Roxas took that as a good sign and pushed on.

The footsteps went on for a good quarter mile before coming to an end at a small rock face where the shaft split again. Up above, he could see an alcove there, somewhere… but it was way too high for him to climb. To the left, the paw prints continued, feverish in their pursuit of whoever left the footprints behind. Roxas elected to follow them into the dark, fingers white across the Kingdom Key’s grip.

With every step, the wheat across the back of his neck rose. It hadn’t felt like he was being watched ten minutes ago, but now… he couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something tailing him. Whenever he whirled around, he found nothing but the inky black and the sheer walls of the mine, but that hardly eased his mind any.

It wasn’t until he turned around to find a pair of golden eyes staring curiously back at him that he remembered just how easy it was for Heartless to melt into shadow.

“Woah, gah!”

With his weapon in hand, Roxas sliced through the single Shadow before bringing his blade upwards to slash through another, hidden behind its ally. They hissed and vanished into puffs of black smoke as he worked through them, stepped free into the spot they’d occupied, and pushed on.

Another shadow popped up when he rounded the corner, claws lunging hard for the throat — but Roxas cut it down with a decisive strike that carved it through at the middle.

The little ones weren’t so bad.

The big one he hadn’t seen yet was gonna be a lot worse.


	10. Burn My Dread

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Roxas faces the abysmal darkness.

Wandering through the tunnels in the dark without a guide gave Roxas a lot of time to think. Pursued by the Heartless that sprang up like weeds every so often, he clung to the rightmost wall as if he were meandering through a paper maze. Whenever the dark sprouted to greet him he threshed it down, his key slicing through the black like a blade hemming wheat.

His thoughts weren’t anywhere near as deliberate.

It was hard not to think about home, and dad, and all the birds he left behind. Roxas wondered if Prompto Argentum, insomniac extraordinaire, could care for the whole ranch on his own. He couldn’t think of anyone better with the birds than his father was. He couldn’t think of anyone more forgetful either.

Was he cleaning the pens? Did he remember to candle the eggs? Roxas couldn’t imagine he was actually tending the pastures or cleaning up the ledger every day, not that they got many sales in the first place. There were still so many little odds and end-spenses to look after, footnotes in the margins to mind.

A slew of shadowy monsters dove at Roxas from above to wipe the slate clean as he rounded a bend. The first went skittering harmlessly by him, but the second sank its claws in across his left arm. He winced and shrank back, but took the third monster down with a heavy slash that cut it clean through.

The remaining two spread out in an attempt to surround him, leaving Roxas to linger with his hand on the wall. When they saw his hesitation, they shrank back into the shadows, vanishing once again.

They were smart enough to know that he couldn’t follow after them.

Eraqus insisted that the Heartless were mindless, good for nothing monsters… but Roxas knew better. His little experience with them thus far revealed to him their one metier — their mindlessness made them dogged predators, and it didn’t require much thought to exploit the weakness of their prey. If Roxas left the wall behind, there was no way he’d remember where he was.

He was pinned to it, a gold flower on a mud-brown lapel.

Once he could be sure the shadows weren’t going to leap out at him again, Roxas resumed his march through the longest shaft he’d found yet. It was a vein that rumbled deep into the earth, and there were a litany of lesser paths that branched out across the far wall and spiderwebbed deeper. He was certain that his path was the one that led back to the cordon by now, and he could only imagine that Eraqus would either be short on his trail or just about to find his own dead end.

His path led him deeper down and bottomed out into a small, abandoned camp. Makeshift break tables and half-stripped tents dotted the bottom of a small indenture, its edges hemmed in by wooden platforms and a sprawling pulley complex that must’ve once powered some hardscrabble elevators.

The elevators in question were broken by the time Roxas found them, collapsed at the bottom of the platform on his left and absolutely shattered on the far side. The ropes that once held his up was charred, as if they’d been burnt through.

Roxas knelt at the ledge, guessed it’d be about a twenty foot drop, and debated just hopping down.

The Keyblade’s power left him a lot more durable than before, and now that he was free of the wall for a second, he felt a lot bolder.

He clambered down about halfway and then popped off the wooden scaffolding with a grunt to land on his feet. A half-stumble later, he was making his way through the camp without much trouble.

Here and there, he could see signs of life.

Half-eaten bags of chips, a few cold cup-noodle cartons, and half-drained water bottles that littered the floor. All of these things were sprinkled across the warm dirt, caked in mud, or otherwise trampled.

It was eerie.

Roxas patched up his left arm when he came across an almost unused first-aid kit strewn across one of the tables. One tight, but dusty wrap later and he was as good as new, except for the stinging pain that kept at him whenever he took a step.

It took him a few minutes to wince his way up the scaffolding on the other side and climb to the top of the platform that led back toward the surface. His hand found the wall once again and he got used to the new incline on his knees after about half a mile. It was kinda comforting to know he was on the right track.

The mine’s typical entrance couldn’t have been more than a few miles away, and that meant that the offshoots that led out of it weren’t much further. With any luck, he and his “master” were going to be back on the road in a few hours… or at least clear of their newest obstacle and good to make camp.

He wasn’t far down the shaft when he spotted a pair of golden eyes staring up at him from below.

Roxas jumped ahead just as a set of glittering claws came cutting out of the earth, striking through the place he’d been just a second prior. Another set came diving from the wall he’d been clinging to, the Heartless’s body erupting from the shadow cast by his slumped shoulders. Roxas huffed and dodged left, brought the Kingdom Key down on its back, and then swung clumsily to cut through the remaining monstrosity before it could swing on him again.

He had only just eased up against the wall to take a breather when a subtle rumble beneath his feet caught him off guard. Roxas looked down to find a four pools of darkness gathering into a corner around him, ready to pin him in against the wall. He backed up into it, Kingdom Key brandished in both hands, and grimaced when a string of new, armor-clad monsters hopped out of the black.

Each wore a clanky, misshapen helmet and a set of colorful jester’s garb, but their eyes were just as gold as the monsters he’d cut through a second ago. Together, they spun and twirled and danced around him, slowly advancing as Roxas melted back toward the wall.

“Not good,” he breathed.

The first one leapt at him and he whacked it across the face with his weapon, but another was jumping in after him before he could land a second blow to finish it off. He ducked low to avoid it, drew his pistol out from its holster at his side, and let off a thunder round toward the two Heartless that were still skirting around the battle’s edge while a set of sharp claws raked sparks across the shaft wall.

Roxas winced and turned just in time to see the second Heartless already diving back at him.

He swung the Kingdom Key backhand and caught it in the face. Steel met steel and steel gave way as the Key tore through the monster’s helmet and dissipated it into a burst of plasma that showered against the wall.

The soldier he’d wounded before shot in and Roxas parried its claw-laden strike with a slash of the Kingdom Key that sent it scrambling to the floor again. Panting, he laid it low while the boom of thunder detonated in the background to consume the two Heartless in the back. They came scrambling after him before he got the chance to turn, their colorful clothes now charred and blackened.

The first sank its claws into Roxas’s leg and brought him to a knee, and the second tackled him around the shoulder and took him to the ground. The Kingdom Key went skittering off into the dark, but the light on his wristband kept him lit enough that he didn’t lose his bearings in the shadows.

He rolled with the momentum, kicked the second soldier off, and swirled back over the dirty floor with his pistol drawn.

One pull.

Two, then three.

Three booms rattled the Heartless to pieces and left him with just one more. It came surging around its fallen comrade, claws slicing through the dark like scythes. Roxas rolled left and extended his off-hand, summoning the Kingdom Key back to his grip. It flashed through the dark as the monster curved to swing again, and sliced clean through the Heartless’s chest with a satisfying fwoom.

Breathing heavy, Roxas steadied himself and battled to his feet. None of his wounds were deep, but they all burnt. Every single one of them festered with little swirls of darkness that gathered like mist across the new litany of cuts and nicks that were spiderwebbed across his skin.

He touched one and flinched a little.

As if he expected literally any other result.

“Course it hurts,” he muttered.

Roxas drew to full height and peered down the tunnel. Despite all the soot that clung to his boots, he couldn’t see any footsteps that could tell him which way he’d come from. There were just clawmarks on the wall, stretched from one way to the other. Frustrated and still stinging, he wandered left on a whim and followed the wall down to a curve he didn’t think he remembered.

Five more minutes of walking led him to a break in the shaft. On the left, a spindle of rocks were draped over an offshoot, the gaps in the shadows they cast sprinkled with splinters of wood and pebble-sized stones. Burn marks decorated the walls leading to the cave in like scars, and deep grooves were cut into the rock that he hadn’t seen the likes of before.

It looked like the result of some kind of fight, or a battle that he just hadn’t been there for. Roxas dragged his fingers across the groove in the rock and frowned.

Eraqus said that Keybearers could use magic…

Was it possible that he was walking the same trail his brother had?

He couldn’t imagine Ven blowing up a mineshaft. Whatever was supposedly following him, however…

Eraqus still hadn’t given Roxas any specifics on who might have been chasing after his brother. Heartless were Roxas’s first guess. They were dogged enough to chase someone across the world. Why they’d be chasing Ven was a mystery, though, especially when there were so many other Keybearers elsewhere.

When Roxas spun around to continue, he swore he saw a set of golden eyes vanish into the shadows.

For a tense moment, he stood stock still.

There was nothing else in there with him. He had to believe that. He couldn’t see anything else, couldn’t hear anything else. Whatever gold eyes had been pinned to his back like daggers were now gone, vanished up in the inky black shadows beyond his wristband’s range. 

“Well, look who we have here,” came another voice, disdain dripping from each word, cutting through the silence like a knife. “You look just like him.”

The voice was faintly familiar, but Roxas couldn’t put a finger on it. Still, the only way anyone could make that sort of statement…

His heart clenched.

“Where are you? Show yourself,” he demanded, wrath creeping at the edges of his voice. He swirled his body left and right, frantic with motion. “And what have you done to my brother?”

On a half-crumbled wood pillar not too far from him, the red veins of a shadow-buried bodysuit shimmered in the dark. Roxas couldn’t quite make out the form: just the glowing visor of a grim helmet and the general shape of the body that wore it.

The shiver that swam up his spine warned him to be careful. 

“So you’re the one he wanted to protect,” the masked man remarked. Even though he couldn’t see his eyes, Roxas could feel the stranger squinting at him, scrutinising him from head to toe. 

“Give me back my brother.”

“How about,” he placed a finger underneath his chin, stroking it as though he were in deep thought, before finally answering with a sharp, “No.”

The masked man remained where he was seated, a single leg drawn up to his chin as he proceeded to rest his head upon it. Roxas noted that he was arm but the feeling in his gut told him that this was a man who knew how to sell his words with actions, to make sure that he saw his threats through and through.

Apart from their physical traits, Roxas was nothing like his brother. If he needed answers, he’d find a way to get them, one way or another. No questions asked. He cocked his left hand back at the wrist and slammed his right fist into the rocky wall beside him. Dust shook and the Kingdom Key flipped, teeth forward.

“Then I’ll take him back!” 

Roxas dove in headfirst, cutting through the space between them with a heavy slash that carved through empty air when his opponent slid left off the pillar to circle around him. Skittering to a stop, Roxas extended his glowing hand and pressed a finger to the stranger’s chest while he danced away, determined to keep him in striking distance.

The stranger smacked Roxas’s fingers away and lifted a stray hand to summon a Key of his own. Made of black and crimson clockwork, its gears glittered in the dark and cried havoc as they deflected another swing from the Kingdom Key.

“Weak,” the masked man declared, landing on his back foot and striking back with a blow of his own that sailed just over Roxas’s left shoulder.

Roxas stumbled to the side as he ducked, scraped his hand over the dirt, and lashed out with a back-handed strike that the stranger deflected away. Three more blows flashed out in the dark, each clang of steel producing an array of sparks that burned into ashes against the mineshaft’s walls.

Just as Roxas felt he was getting the upper hand, the stranger knocked aside another blow and stepped in — free hand leading — to push him into the wall. The blond Keybearer hefted the Kingdom Key in his defense and caught an incoming swing with a two-handed grip, painfully aware of the sharp rock against his back. The darkness’s steel slid down until it hit the Kingdom Key’s teeth, when Roxas pushed forward, teeth grinding together.

The helmeted man ripped their equilibrium apart with a one handed drag that sent the younger boy staggering left. Roxas balanced on his left foot and swung for the fences as his foe hopped in to press his advantage — but his strike went wide and sliced through open air.

He lost his balance.

The stranger’s free hand surged in.

And then a boom of thunder sent Roxas rolling down the shaft, shoulder-to-ass-to-shoulder until he landed skittering on his feet. 

“That’s new,” Roxas muttered, the breath plundered from his chest.

Shadows couldn’t do that. He knew Terra could do something similar…

Before Roxas could dwell on it, a thrush of lightning forked through the dark to cut right for him. He blocked with the Kingdom Key and screamed when the electricity surged right through the blade to shock him raw. Smoke curled off of his shoulders as he dropped to a knee and forced himself back to his feet in the same breath, frustrated by the pain.

“Metal’s a conductor, idiot,” the stranger drawled, advancing into Roxas’s sphere of light with his Keyblade at the ready. It was only then that Roxas noticed the peering, cobalt eye that stared at him from the weapon’s guard.

“Shut up and fight,” Roxas growled back, leaping forward with a blitz-like frontflip that brought his Key down hard from above. The stranger caught the blow and pushed him off, then retaliated with a diving stab that Roxas rolled left to avoid.

Helmet-head recovered just before Roxas could set in on him with a series of fierce slashes that each got slapped away. He was an instant from bringing down a fourth when a hearty boot slammed into his chest and knocked him flat on his ass.

His back was to the cave in. It was hard to think of where in their dance he’d gotten so turned around, but it wasn’t hard to climb back to his feet. His joints were numb and he couldn’t feel his fingers. The ache in his legs from earlier was gone, replaced by a comfortable death that washed away all of the pain.

Taking the Kingdom Key in both hands, Roxas stared his foe down.

“You’re almost as weak as he was,” the stranger yawned. “But at least he gave me an interesting fight. You don’t even know how to use magic, do you?”

“I don’t need magic to kick your ass.”

“That’s my line.”

Helmet-head clenched his fist and a bolt of lightning rushed down from the ceiling. Roxas hopped left to avoid it and closed the gap again with a heavy, two-handed slash that got batted into the wall. He came back up to swing again and a hand closed around his throat, hefted him into the air, and then whipped him down the shaft with the force of a hurricane.

He caught himself on one leg and stumbled into the wall as he drew his father’s pistol from its holster, eyes narrow.

“Yeah, but I wasn’t kidding!”

He leveled it at the stranger, flipped a switch with his thumb, and pulled the trigger three times. Three chunks of ice whistled through the air and two shattered into crystal as they were deflected away, but the third hit home with a satisfying thunk as it buried itself into the stranger’s shoulder.

The masked man let out an awful yowl and ripped the chunk away with his bare hand, bursting it so that he could scatter its crystalline ashes across the floor.

“Give up,” Roxas called, keeping the stranger in his sights as he fumed in the shadows. He could only track him by the red veins in his suit, which left him to glint like a target in the black. “I’m not playing games with you. Give me back my brother, before you get hurt.”

The laugh that followed was so cold that it put his blizzard rounds to shame.

“You’re the one in danger here,” the stranger sneered. “It’s about time I started taking you seriously. Show you a glimpse of what real power means.”

Roxas heard a sickening crack and then a current of lightning snickered to life around the stranger’s wrist. Blue and black, it cackled in the dark and lit the man’s side in a furious glow. He hardly had the chance to process what that meant before that same electricity surged up the length of the stranger’s clockwork Key.

Backlit by a coronet of that same lightning, the stranger dashed forward and lashed out with a series of heavy blows that Roxas did his best to duck and weave around. Each one felt faster before, more lethal, aimed with an intent to kill that hadn’t been there a moment ago. A particularly close swipe carved through the fabric of his shirt and cut a sharp, red line down the front of his chest.

He replied with a wrathful, overhead strike that carried all of his strength — and the stranger caught it with both hands for the first time. Roxas pressed down hard as lancets of lightning circled his foe’s blade, charged through his own, and shocked the fringes of his fingers. He bore on despite the pain, the teeth of his Keyblade pointed down as he tried to leverage all his power.

Key shook over key and lightning crackled, glittered, and lit his face with a viral fury that reflected across the stranger’s helmet.

Roxas’s teeth ground together and a call from the ether buzzed in his ears like the cry of a bandsaw.

_Vanitas!_

_Ventus!_

The blue of Roxas’s eyes flashed and golden light burned down the Kingdom Key’s length. Sheafs of white burgeoned away from the blade and cut away the thick, ubiquitous shaft that once dominated its golden guard. What replaced it were two thin, sterling rods that led into a pointed star with jagged edges. Its hilt diminished, shrunken to an ornate, twin-barreled shape that resembled a saber’s hilt.

Inside, something fell away. Like Dickonson’s plank, it tumbled down and down and out of the boy’s heart, replaced by the burn of a new power. He felt it brimming beneath his veins, and it rose to guard him through the edges of his new Key as the stranger’s power dipped in reply.

He — Vanitas — shrank away as Roxas slapped their keys apart, leaving the both of them to scramble for supremacy. Three brings of white and blue met black, followed by a series of blurry strokes that danced between the edge of Roxas’s light and the grim darkness that Vanitas now owned.

The masked boy struck again and again from the dark, his blade a viper.

Roxas parried again and again, his new strength granting him the edge he needed to keep pace.

He didn’t understand it, not fully.

But it, too, was his.

Vanitas whipped his Keyblade from within the shadows, tossing it like an axe through the air toward Roxas’s sternum. Roxas smacked it away and then steadied himself while the blade went spinning up toward the ceiling, his eyes so fixated on the black that he didn’t notice the shadow that sprang from the weapon’s grip.

He glanced up just in time to see a jet of light impact the masked boy’s side and send him rolling back into the shadows. Light teemed off of the wound and festered as he clambered to his feet, felled by the sudden burst of power.

Roxas turned toward the source, new Key held tight in hand, to see Eraqus standing at the edge of the corridor.

“Roxas,” he greeted, steadying his Keyblade toward the masked boy and lowering his hips. “You may want to pay closer attention.”

“Right,” Roxas replied, breathless.

Backed by his master, Roxas took his new weapon in hand and turned to face Vanitas, who now stood opposite the both of them. His face was still hidden by his black helmet, but the light of his new wound burned bright enough that Roxas could see his fangs through the veneer. He was a wolf, wounded, but without hunger.

“Oh, of course,” Vanitas groaned. “Alright. Enough of these games. I’ll get you eventually, when you’re on your own.”

“You’re going to try,” Roxas wagered, fingers clasping tight around his blade — Oathkeeper’s — hilt.

“Don’t think you’re safe, golden boy.”

Vanitas pushed his left hand against the wall and a veil of black fire spread out like a vine toward the warm earth. Before Roxas or Eraqus could do anything to stop him, Vanitas fell through it and tumbled through to the other side, the flames vanishing behind him with a gentle whisper.

* * *

Eraqus and Roxas stepped out of the mines, with the latter being dazed and confused. He had been so close to finding out where his brother was, but by the time they had taken down The Great Balouve Darkness, the masked man had long hightailed it out of there, leaving Roxas wrought with even more worry for Ventus.

“Roxas!” came a familiar voice, tainted with the wrath of a thousand men. “Where in Astrals’ name have you been?”

It was Hayner. Lingering behind him was his father. Roxas vaguely remembered the hunters lingering in town; he must have not seen Uncle Libertus amidst them. 

“Hey kid,” he greeted Roxas, eyes lingering across the battered body before he fixated his gaze on Eraqus. “Prompto said that you were with your uncle.”

Roxas allowed the information to sink in before finally answering, “He is.”

“Nice to meet you. I’m Libertus,” the bearded man introduced himself and gently pat Hayner on the back. “Hayner’s my kid. Quite obnoxious, don’t you think?”

“Pleasure to meet you, Libertus. I’m Eraqus,” his Master – no, Ventus’s Master – introduced himself, playing along with Roxas’s little fib.

“Forget that, Roxas! Why didn’t you answer any of my calls?” Hayner demanded, clearly offended that his own pal hadn’t been talking to him. “Olette’s worried sick. Pence is back on the road, and…”

“Roxas,” Libertus interjected. “Your father went on a trip somewhere and hasn’t been contactable since. One of the Wiz kids is holding down the fort, and I have my boys keeping an eye on the birds. Any idea where he could’ve gone?”

The look in the older man’s eyes told Roxas that Libertus knew exactly why Prompto had left the ranch: to find Ventus, but it was incredibly uncharacteristic of his father to work alone, not when he knew his father was a people person.

Also a people pleaser, but Roxas wouldn’t let the old man know that his son thought of him in such a way. Even Ventus, the most alike to him, had some sense of dignity their father clearly lacked.

Frowning, Roxas exhaled a long, deep breath before he replied. “How long’s he been gone?” 

“About a week or so,” Libertus answered. “Maybe a little bit longer than that.”

Hayner didn’t need to look at his friend to know his face was as pale as the feathers of a silver chocobo before his friend stepped away for a moment, a hand dipping into his pocket to take a look at downgraded phone granted to him by his father.

“I need to make a call.”

* * *

Night had long fallen over Balouve. Roxas had missed the gorgeous aspects of the sunset that day, but being around Hayner’s exuberant presence made up for it. The long ride back to the Hunter’s Headquarters in Balouve did little to assuage his discomfort or the anxiety brewing under his skin, though. the comforts of the barracks-style bedroom they shared that night didn’t help as much as his best friend did.

His muscles ached with long ignored fatigue, and his head swam with all sorts of questions.

The biggest question was: how long ago had it been since his brother was there?

“Hey man, what’s up?” Hayner asked, nudging him lightly in the ribs. “You’ve been zoning out, staring into space. Is it about your old man?”

Roxas nodded slowly. That wasn’t too far from the truth but Roxas knew he wasn’t ready to tell Hayner everything yet; it was clear that anyone who possessed knowledge of the keyblade were exposed to constant peril.

He recalled back to what Eraqus mentioned about the Land of Departure: it was a place that Ven deemed safe.

“Not just him,” he admitted, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Hey, don’t sweat it,” Hayner gave his friend a firm slap on the back. “I figured.”

Roxas remained silent.

“What were you doing down there?” Hayner asked.

“I think Ven’s alive,” Roxas admittedly, before directing a harsh glare in Hayner’s direction. “There was no body, so he’s got be out there somewhere.”

“So you were looking for him?”

“Kinda. We think he might’ve gone to the Quay.”

“And the fastest way is through Balouve, I guess,” Hayner mused.

“Some guy might have him. He said he did, anyway. Eraqus thinks there’s no way. I’m…”

“Not so sure?”

Roxas nodded. He felt Hayner’s gaze lingering on him for longer than it should, and then, a snap of the fingers.

“I’ve got it! How about I join ya?” he exclaimed, before he dove into a hushed silence. 

“I know how much Ven means to you so as your bestest pal…”

Roxas snorted inwardly.

“I’m coming along with you! No 'but's!”

“But…”

“That sounds a lot like a 'but',” Hayner counter-protested. “If it’s my old man you’re worried about, I can handle him. Besides, you’d rather be stuck alone with that old geezer all day?”

Roxas blinked once, then twice, as he pondered about the possibility of having a lot of fun with Hayner around. At the very least, there was someone his age. The implication thought… 

“So what, you’re going to join us?” “Totally. You and me, on the road. Buddies trip.”

“Your dad’s going to come looking for us.”

“He’ll send hunters, you mean.”

“Who know all the roads.”

“So we won’t take roads.”

Roxas paused a second, contemplating Hayner’s thought process and how deeply flawed it was.

“Where will we go? I don’t know where we’d even start…” Roxas muttered.

“Pence and Olette are going to be heading to the Quay this weekend. We could start there, link up with them, get the band back together.”

“The band never broke up in the first place,” Roxas scoffed.

“And what better way to prove it?”

Roxas hated to admit it, but Hayner had a point. Joining up with Pence and Olette sounded like a good idea. At the same time, there was also Eraqus to be worried about: he, too, was worried for Ventus. 

So far, no body was left behind, but the confrontation with the boy named Vanitas had shed some light on what happened to his brother. If anything, it proved Vanitas right. 

Tentatively, he glanced back to his friend and away from the spartan walls that penned them in. 

“Alright. You can come. I’ll make sure of it,” Roxas promised.

Assuming Hayner’s victorious cheer didn’t wake everyone in the headquarters up and get them caught, of course.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the late release. We were stuck in a rut for a while and got caught up with real life. We're back to writing and, hopefully, we'll be back to our regular posting schedule.


	11. Dog Meets House

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Roxas and Hayner kickstart their adventure. Eraqus makes an uncomfortable slip.

Sunrays cut through the open window in the middle of a dry summer past, highlighted the flecks and specks that drifted wayward over the carpet, and burned gold against Roxas’s bedsheet. Ven was nowhere to be found — he was out in the yard with the birds, flying through the trees maybe — and Dad was off for the day, gone somewhere Roxas might never see.

The birdsong outside was muted in his ears, muffled in comparison to the real thing. He knew he wasn’t there. That he wasn’t there anymore, at least, and that the moment was gone. That made the feeling all the more surreal: as if he were remembering something that never happened, calling on a memory he now lacked.

Golden hair clung to his forehead, matted, sweaty. A set of lithe fingers brushed it away and swept down his cheek, but he barely registered them beyond the feeling they brought on.

Comfort.

He mumbled something incomprehensible even to him. Creaked his eyes open just in time to see a pair of soft, pink lips coming down on his forehead. He didn’t recognize the face they belonged to, its features a slate in the annals of his memory.

The whispers that followed were cool and soothing.

The cold sweat he woke up in was unsettling by comparison. Stepping out from beneath the comforter, Roxas parted the curtains to glance out the window of their room.

The sun was replaced by a blanket of stars illuminating the night skies. A cloudless night always meant that it was a sight to behold. Living on the outskirts of Insomnia was a life away from the city, but Roxas knew he wouldn’t change it for any other thing, not when Mother Nature exuded a magnificence that not even the glorious skylines of Insomnia could compare to.

* * *

The breakfast that followed Roxas’s would-be nightmare wasn’t a comfortable one. Roxas felt stiff all over, his body finally accepting the ache from the night before like a crypt might a curse. The stinging blows the masked boy caught him with were also there, bundled up on top of his general pain as bruises that littered his arms and legs. There were a few burns scattered in there too, for good measure.

More painful though was Eraqus’s displeasure with his decision to bring Hayner into the fold. They bickered back and forth over the old man’s campfire-style rations as they made their way to the city gate to wait for him, passing a bar of chocolate back and forth between them while they drug from their individual canteens. 

“Your friend will become a distraction,” Eraqus told him directly, with all the disapproval in his bones. “You know better than to put him in danger.”

“And I know better than to stop him from coming,” Roxas retorted. “He wouldn’t stay behind, even if I told him to. He’d just tail us.”

“I’m not sure whether I’ll be able to defend both of you.”

“He’s not going to need defending,” Roxas shot back.

“He has no Keyblade.”

“His father’s a hunter. Him being with us increases our chances of survival.”

The two traded pointed stares until eventually Eraqus’s doubt gave way to defeat, allowing Roxas a smug moment to himself.

“A heart to bear the world’s burdens,” Eraqus murmured. “I suppose I should’ve known better. Your brother would encourage me to have more faith.”

Roxas agreed with that sentiment. Ven saw the best in everyone. He was the kind of guy to pick a kitten up off the side of the road and insist it was a lion. It was both one of his best qualities and his most infuriating.

Together, he and Eraqus came to the city’s gates, where Hayner was already waiting for them. A backpack was strung over his shoulders and a few spare supply packs waited at his waist, with some even strung along down the sides of his camo pants.

“You’re early,” Roxas stated in disbelief as Hayner proudly saluted them.

“Have a little more faith in your boy,” Hayner grumbled.

“This is a perilous journey. Are you certain you’d like to come along?”

“No,” Hayner huffed. “But I'm not leaving this dork alone again.”

“No time to waste, then. We must hurry to the Land of Departure."

Roxas and Hayner shared a look. 

"Ven isn't gonna be there, though, is he? That other guy has him somewhere."

"You're correct. However, Aqua has alerted me to the arrival of a potential new pupil."

“Yeah?"

Eraqus nodded. "She's been sent to the Land of Departure, and shall meet us there for tutelage. It may be a good time to 'gather our eggs,' so to speak."

* * *

“Let me get this straight: you guys fight using giant magic keys?” 

Roxas nodded. 

“And he’s not your uncle?”

“I believe Mister Argentum said that for Roxas’s sake,” Eraqus interjected. Roxas recognized the undercurrent of annoyance as he spoke, albeit subtle. “It’d be wise to respect his wishes.”

“Why didn’t your pops come with you then?” Hayner inquired. 

“Someone needed to look after the farm so there was no way he could leave,” Roxas retorted. “I knew he wanted to though…”

“... Can I see the key?” Hayner dared to ask, curiosity lingering in the depths of his hazel hues.   
  
“Perhaps it’s best to show your friend what power you have,” Eraqus suggested. “About the responsibility it entails.”

The way the older man emphasized on the word ‘responsibility’ didn’t go unnoticed, but Roxas paid it no mind as he willed his weapon to materialize. There was a crack of black sparks and then, a bright glow of light that eventually formed into what it was: Oathkeeper.

“Well, that fixes the problem with Sora,” Roxas remarked out loud. 

“It certainly does,” Eraqus responded, uncertain of how to react to that but with a sigh of relief. “You’ve awakened your power.”

“I have.”

Hayner ran his fingers along Oathkeeper’s surface; it was cool underneath his touch and the pads of his fingers glided smoothly along it. Roxas knew a real weapon when he saw one, and knew that Oathkeeper bore sharper teeth than the toy the Kingdom Key was in comparison. Hayner seemed equally impressed. 

They were no longer kids begging to play with old iron. 

“This is incredible craftsmanship,” he remarked incredulously. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“It’s formed from Roxas’s heart,” Eraqus explained as the three of them traversed away from Balouve. “Each Keyblade is a reflection of the heart, the deepest desires of its wielder."

The dark-haired man glanced at Oathkeeper. 

“The heart wants what it wants,” he reinforced, patting the boy on the shoulder. “This is a manifestation of your desire to save your brother. Don’t take it lightly, Roxas.”

Roxas pursed his lips together, annoyed that the old man was chiding him in front of Hayner, but it seemed that the latter had decided to step in. It was a subtle move, but there was a quiet flame in Hayner’s eyes that Roxas hadn’t quite seen before.

“When it comes to family, Roxas doesn’t take it lightly,” he paused. “Especially when it comes to those he has left.”

* * *

The sun was setting and night was about to fall upon them, which meant that they had to set up camp.

With Hayner around, everything went a lot smoother: the time to set up the tents was cut short as the boy managed to apply his knowledge. That was a relief. The curatives helped ease the aches Roxas felt, but that didn’t mean that it was completely gone; it just meant that everything else needed time and time was a luxury that Roxas knew they could not afford.

Not when Vanitas was still out there, looking for his brother.

“My old man brought me out on a few of his missions but that’s because I’d bug him till dawn elsewise,” Hayner explained when questioned by Eraqus about his extensive knowledge on survival skills. “He wanted to make sure I knew how to survive.”

Eraqus, Roxas noticed, was fairly new to their culture. His mannerisms were completely different from what Roxas was accustomed to and there were mentions of things he had heard about – probably from Terra, Aqua and Ventus – but he never quite believed it for himself until now.

Instead, he settled for tending to the Chocobos, who regarded him with all the fondness in the world. 

It was moments after Hayner retired to bed that Eraqus sat down to talk with him.

“We have things to discuss,” Eraqus informed him. “Regarding the boy in the helmet.”

“Any idea why he came after my brother?” Roxas inquired. “Terra and Aqua… what, were they too hard of a target? Why Ven?”

“It’s difficult to say. Ventus’s comparative inexperience does make him a more appealing target… though I don’t think that’s quite why our quarry chose him.”

“Maybe he’s got something against you,” Roxas accused.

“On the contrary, it may be something against your family,” came the older man’s calm reply. 

“What could my father have done to anybody?” 

“Your father was once the King’s Crownsguard. It’s possible he’s made a plethora of his own enemies,” Eraqus answered. “He was the King’s right hand. Closer to him than any other.”

The message took a moment to simmer into his head before Roxas understood the implications behind it.

“He never talks about those days,” Roxas muttered. “I always thought he was exaggerating.”

“Your father’s former prowess is no exaggeration. There are no overstatements that could apply to his skill; during the war, he was a sharpshooter without peer. Even the King cannot match his skill with a firearm, not that he would see reason to.”

“We’re not our dad.”

“And no one expects you to be… but the point at hand is that the boy in the helmet, Vanitas, seems to be after the both of you. He has not come after me, and contrary to expectation if he were, he fled once I arrived.”

“He might’ve just wanted to pick us off, not fight us head on,” Roxas countered.

“Ah, then why not save you for last? You are, after all, the lower risk target. Without me to guard you, you would, without doubt, be rudderless.”

Roxas didn’t like that assertion, but he couldn’t really argue with it.

“Thankfully, we aim to fix that tomorrow. I’ve already informed your friend—”

“His name is Hayner.”

“—that your training resumes at five o’clock sharp tomorrow.”

So far, Eraqus hadn’t shown him much. How to summon his key, how to swing it a little. He still hadn’t shown Roxas much magic, or explained any of the theory behind it. It was like he was feeding him tidbits, little breadcrumbs instead of big chunks of the stuff he’d need. Roxas rested his fist on his cheek at the thought.

Eraqus, in the meanwhile, gathered himself at the door. For a moment, he dallied there, waiting for Roxas to say something. When he finally did, it was nothing productive.

“Whatever.”

“Goodnight, Roxas. I hope you sleep well,” Eraqus continued. “You may need it.”

Then he stepped away, leaving Roxas with only one question that he couldn’t put out of his mind.

During his time with Eraqus, he’d gone over the battle with the masked boy at least half a dozen times... 

But never — not once — did he remember saying the boy’s name.

* * *

It didn’t take Hayner long to realize something was wrong. He caught Roxas laying awake late into the night, on his side. The crickets were chirping endlessly by then, their song a frustration and a nightmare both. A sound that used to comfort him now just kept him awake, and before long Roxas was groaning and trying to stuff his ears with his almost-pillow of a jacket.

“Hey, calm down over there,” Hayner grunted.

“You calm down,” Roxas fired back.

“You calm down.”

Roxas squinted.

“Did something happen between you and the old man?”

“Which old man?”

Hayner balked.

“What, we travel with like fifty old men now? Not just the one creepy old samurai guy?”

Hayner’s flawless logic left Roxas without a solid refutation. He squinted in reply, not sure of what to say.

“He just creeps me out sometimes, is all. This whole situation creeps me out.”

“Guess I can’t blame you there. Things’ve been pretty crazy for you, huh?”

“Oh yeah, remember the photo girl that Pence showed us? I met her. Her name’s Naminé. She’s the Princess,” Roxas remarked. 

Hayner stared him a long moment before putting the pieces together.

“You went to Insomnia?” he cried out. “And you couldn’t text us that?”

Roxas shook his head.

“It wasn’t convenient.”

Hayner stared at him for a long time.

“You’re a total bumpkin,” Hayner said, his eyes narrowed.

Roxas leaned over, punched him dead center in the bicep, and rolled his eyes.

“How was she? That princess of yours.”

“Can it. We barely talked,” Roxas shot back, looking away to hide the red that crept into his cheeks. “There’re more important things for you to worry about anyway.”

“Oh, yeah. Like, sleeping.”

For a second, Roxas thought Hayner was gonna let that be it. It wasn’t long before he cut back in, though.

“Do we tell Pence he was right? I told him he was crazy like four times.”

Roxas shook his head. He thought of Naminé and how cordial she had been, but there was a devotion to her family hidden beneath unseen layers.

Plus, the King clearly cared for his daughter’s safety, as well as her privacy.

“Nah. I love him and all but I don’t trust his knack for news sometimes. Dude’s a rumor mill.”

“Did you manage to get in touch with Olette? She’s been momming you by proxy all day.” 

“Yeah. The problem right now is that time is of the essence. We need to be at the Land of Departure. Ven might be waiting for us.”

Roxas paused.

“For me. Once we find him, we have my old man to worry about.”

Hayner nodded, before the question hit him.

“Which one?”

* * *

Despite the wintry weather, the ocean still flowed, uninhibited by nature’s frosty touch. Instead of the pristine blue he was accustomed to, Roxas was greeted with a shade of darkness and the skies still grey. The waters were calm, but it was as though there was something ominous lurking below its murky surface. 

“Roxas! Hayner!” 

Olette’s spritely voice rings through the air, like spring breaking through the winter. She is dressed in beige and orange, with a brown jacket to compliment her getup and lace-up boots. Earmuffs covered her ears, but Roxas knows that she can hear. 

Both himself and Hayner sprinted towards her. Her arms are wide open and, before he could even react, Olette’s arms had made its way around his midsection, squeezing him tight.

“I’m so glad you’re okay,” she managed, relief evident in her voice. Although Hayner had forewarned him in advance, it didn’t stop the guilt from flooding him within moments. Gaining his bearings, he returned her hug.

“Sorry about that. Should’ve called or texted,” he replied, uncertain of what else he ought to say. 

As Olette pulled away, Roxas noticed her viridian hues trailing to where Eraqus stood. It was subtle, but the lines in his face suddenly seemed deeper than usual: an indication of his disapproval. 

“Roxas, who is that?”

“He’s Ven’s… teacher,” Roxas managed. “I’ll tell you more later.”

Olette nodded earnestly, before turning to the older man.

“Hi, I’m Olette. Thank you for looking after my friends,” the girl said, bowing to Eraqus. Roxas didn’t see it, but he could literally feel Eraqus being pleasantly surprised that there was someone with more-than-passable manners amidst them. 

“C’mon, let’s talk over lunch. Bet you guys are starving.”

“About that, Olette…”

“I’m sorry, young lady, but I’m afraid we don’t have a lot of time. The longer we stay here…”

Roxas beat him to the punch, “Is the ferry available?” 

Olette shook her head. With a grim look upon her face, she answered, “Not today. I tried to ask them to spare us a ferry, but no one’s available to take us.”

Hayner scrunched his nose, “I know a load of bullshit when I hear one.”

“For once, I agree with you, young man,” Eraqus spoke up. He turned to Olette and the gaze in his eyes softened, but there was a distinct hardness to it that was still there. “I suppose I can’t blame them… it’ll be hard to allow children on board with supervision.”

Olette flushed red. Hayner did the same, but for different reasons.

“Children? We’re old enough—”

“Fourteen years of age is hardly old enough to take responsibility for anything.”

As Hayner and Eraqus bantered between each other, Roxas slid closer to Olette, finding comfort in her presence. Beneath his breath, he murmured, “Where’s Pence?”

“He called and said that he was going to be stuck in Insomnia for the time being,” Olette explained, keeping her focus on the other two. “Something big happened there and I think both him and his father want to gather as much information as possible.”

His phone buzzed in his pocket. At first, Roxas thought it was merely a message, but when the vibrations continued without any sign of stopping, Roxas excused himself away from the group to pick up the call.

He couldn’t help but raised his eyebrow at the name flashing on his screen.

Cindy Aurum.

* * *

Cindy Aurum was a woman from his father’s past. Roxas could only assume his dad was into cougars. Last time he checked, Aunt Cindy was a good six years older than Prompto. Roxas couldn’t help but squint at her every time he saw her. He remembered his uncle Gladiolus’s stories well.

“Hello?”

“Sugar, did something happen? Ol' Liberty called, said somethin’ about running off with ya,” she elaborated, her voice dominated by the same twang as always.

It didn’t take long to fill her in. He kept it short and sweet… much like the rev of the engine in the background around the time he finished, and the crunch of a gear shift being shoved unceremoniously back. He heard her swear, but it was bleached out by the sound of screeching tires.

“Wait, Aunt Cindy—”

“If you think I’m not gonna come check in on you, you’re crazy,” Cindy said with mock offense. “Where are you now?”

“Galdin Quay. Hayner doesn’t want to get caught by his dad. Hayner was the one who insisted on coming with me,” Roxas informed her quietly, audible enough to her ears. “Telling him to go back after all coming all the way here is not an option for him at… at, uh, this point in time.”

“Ten-four. I’m not far from there as is. I’ll be there in ten. Don’t you go anywhere.”

Roxas breathed a sigh a relief.

“Thanks, Aunt Cindy.”

“Don’t thank me yet. You’re still not out of the woods, hon.”


	12. Grits And Grease

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Roxas enjoys dinner with an old family friend. Eraqus makes conversation. Olette frets.

It wasn’t hard to spot Cindy Aurum in the front of her tow truck — the sort that was meant to pull crippled cars back to Hammerhead. He remembered the days when she used to pick him up from school in that horrible, loud ass thing. It sounded like a whale dragging itself across asphalt by the tailfin.

She crept along in her rustbucket monstrosity until the coast wound up the cliffside and Roxas watched her the whole way, flinching a little with every creak and groan the old truck let cry. Roxas and Hayner were huddled together in the back seat, Hayner bridal style in Roxas’s arms, the two of them sandwiched between a sack full of old parts and half of a very old, very red car’s front hood; neither of them looked happy.

Olette, meanwhile, was happily chitchatting away with Cindy from the passenger seat. Unlike Roxas, she had no accidental accent slips and she didn’t fall into a southern drawl every few minutes.

The truck wound its way up to a narrow curve that led to a parking lot. There, a blurry faced man with messy brown hair and a half-undone cap waited, arms crossed, for them to pull into two completely different parking spaces.

Hayner was the first out the door.

He nearly fell flat on his face in an effort to flee Roxas’s totally loving, not at all clammy embrace. He threw his arms around the stuffy looking Talcott as if he’d spent the last ten miles praying for salvation.

“Talcott, my man! I haven’t seen you in centuries!”

“Two weeks is—”

“Long enough!”

Roxas chuckled. Hayner was far from a patient person; while two weeks was deemed as short by most people, his friend’s impatience had the tendency to run its course via exaggeration.

Something about this man – Talcott – reminded him of his father but there were aspects of him that belonged to him and him alone. There was the all too familiar sight of grime scattered across his being, from his fabric to his flesh and, having messed around in the artillery before, Roxas recognised the faint scent of motor oil.

Something about this man reminded him of his father. Roxas’s heart ached at the mere thought of Prompto.

Olette bobbed out from the passenger seat and introduced herself without a worry. She and Talcott traded small talk until it was Cindy’s turn to pray with Talcottin front of a gravestone located not too far from them.

He wondered who the older man had lost. 

Once the man was done conversing with Hayner and his Aunt Cindy, he turned to Roxas with a fond gaze. He looked so warm — so familiar.

“Hello, Roxas. Been a while,” was Talcott’s kind greeting. Roxas’s eyes widened.

“You know me?”

“I know your dad. You’re looking at the world’s best babysitter,” Talcott bragged, gesturing for his guests to follow him up the hill that led to the lighthouse. “Last time I saw you, you were just barely out of your diapers. Still a handful?”

“I guess,” Roxas muttered, not sure he remembered Talcott at all. It felt some days like he had so many uncles that they were all starting to blur together. Just how many people did his dad really know?

Roxas took in the moment to look up at the tower looming above them, its light breaking through the fogginess of the place. 

The waves were calm, but Roxas could hear them getting louder and louder; the scent of ocean salt was incredibly welcomed as the sea breeze gently made its course in between his golden mane; the trees were devoid of their greenery; fallen sticks and branches crunched beneath their feet as they continued in their short journey up the rocky terrain. 

When the finally crested the hill, Roxas found himself surprised by the existence of a dilapidated looking manor. It was two stories, maybe three counting the attic. Half of it looked stormed out.

Talcott invited them inside.

Despite its rundown exterior, the inside was fairly refurbished and looked well-maintained. There were more rooms than he thought, and somehow, more space than he expected. It looked ready for guests, its surface was well worn.

The scent of tea wafted into their nostrils. It seemed like he had been expecting them for quite some time.

“Chamomile with hints of lavender,” Eraqus mused. “Lovely choice of tea.”

“Please, feel free to help yourselves. There are some spare mugs over here,” he gestured over to a tray full of coffee mugs. There was one that had a huge ‘S’ written on, bright red in colour, as though it were meant to make a statement.

His eyes land upon a row of picture frames. Roxas glanced over it, noting that some of the photos were of his father, the king and his royal servants in their youth. There was a little boy among them, one that Roxas came to recognise as the man of this house. 

“Wait,” he squinted. “Is Sora your kid?”

“You must know of what happened at the castle then,” Eraqus supposed.

It was Talcott’s turn to frown, but he nodded.

“I know the guys kept him safe,” he said, catching himself a second later. “The King, Ignis and Gladio. Those guys.”

“How’s Prompto?”

“Dunno. Haven’t seen him in a while.”

Hayner interjected, “No one has. That’s the problem.”

The conversation fell into a lull for a second, the sound of it fading into the background while Roxas peered through Talcott’s living room. His fingers found an old photograph of a boy standing beside a much younger King, whose arm was slung around a much younger Prompto Argentum.

“My dad never really talks about the old days,” Roxas said. “But every time I see him in these photos, he’s all over the king. Like they’re best friends.”

“It’s a long story,” Talcott explained, poking Hayner away from the china cabinet.

“You must know all our dads already then, since you know Roxas’s dad and the king,” Hayner thought aloud. Roxas couldn’t say anything, wondering how much of his father’s life he must’ve been missing out on.

“You don’t look like much of a bigshot, though.”

Talcott glanced at Roxas’s wristband, then looked away as if he weren’t ready to glance back over to it six seconds later. “Humble roots, I guess.”

“Any of the hunters asked about us?”

“Your dad called me a while ago, after the stuff at the castle,” Talcott answered, his gaze now outright fixed on Roxas, causing the boy to squirm uncomfortably.

He didn’t like feeling so exposed with someone he barely knew. Didn’t like feeling so uneven.

“His Majesty called too,” Talcott informed and Roxas’s head snapped up. “Left a boat for you. His way of saying thanks for your help, I think.”

“What’s the catch?” Hayner asked, an eyebrow raised, clearly disgruntled. Roxas, on the other hand, felt appalled at how easily everything seemed to fall into place for them now that they didn’t need the help.

He knew that his father and the king were close, but how much influence did Prompto Argentum have that even the king was willing to move mountains for him?

“There isn’t one. His Majesty felt that you’d need it when the time came,” was all Roxas managed to get out of Talcott before the older man veered towards the kitchen area, where Aunt Cindy was already raiding the kitchen for some food.

Before Roxas knew it, the three of them were helping her put everything together for an impromptu dinner. While he couldn’t wait to bounce, she was ever-excited to stick around and tease Talcott a little more. Every so often, she poked and prodded about his love life — and how nonexistent it was.

“Don’t you have something better to do?” Roxas teased, just as she shoved a pile of plates for him to set on the table.

“Naw, course not. I’ve always got time for family, sugar.”

Talcott laughed at that.

Roxas raised an eyebrow. Each time his father invited her over, she’d arrive an hour too late and be the first to leave the dinner table. She came late, ate fast and left early.

Yet, here she was. 

Being super considerate to a guy he’d never seen before.

Who was, apparently, family.

“Your pops’d kill me if I let something happen to you,” Aunt Cindy reassured. 

“Tell you what,” she went on. “I’ll even cook for ya. Country fried steak, collard greens, the works. Talcott might have some cornbread mix hangin’ around.”

* * *

Dinner was surprisingly quiet, but Roxas was more than relieved that there was a whole table full of food. From the corner of his eye, Hayner was positively drooling.

“Jeez man, close your mouth,” Roxas quipped, snorting a little.

Hayner snorted.

“It’d be a disgrace if I closed my mouth,” Hayner said, eyes flickering over to Olette. “What do you think, Olette?”

Olette was poking at a side of cornbread with her fork, unsure, exactly, of what to do. It looked dryer than regular bread and a lot more crumbly. Her response was a low whisper. “It would be rude to ignore it. Especially after Cindy worked so hard to make it.”

Roxas chimed in, “It’s the first time seeing her cook, to be honest. Dad was the one cooking for us.”

Hayner was already shoveling some collard greens in his mouth as if it were the last thing he’d ever eat. Eraqus was, comparatively, more reserved and chose to engage himself in polite smalltalk with the other adults at the table.

“Ah, interesting cuisine,” he mused, mirroring Olette in the way he poked at his dinner. Never before had an adult man looked more like a fifteen year old girl. “This is the traditional food from Leide, I assume?”

Cindy grinned. Roxas recognized a shit-eating grin when he saw one.

“This is considered my chef’s special!”

“Ignis would be, uh, proud of you,” Talcott smiled, doing his best not to flinch as he cut into a country fried steak. He was pretty sure it was chicken. Or maybe it was beef. It looked a little purple.

Eraqus engaged Cindy a little more than Talcott. “Do you cook often, Cindy?”

“Of course! How’s a girl supposed to live without food?” she exclaimed in mock offense. 

“I’m kinda surprised Cindy’s not fat,” Hayner muttered, his mouth stuffed. “This stuff is so good! Olette, how come you’re not eating?”

“Not hungry,” she said, managing a forced smile. “And Hayner, that was incredibly rude.”

If Hayner heard her, he paid little heed to it. Roxas let his gaze linger on his friend. The trepidation in her emerald hues were more than enough.

Something was wrong.

That didn’t help him understand how to bring it up.

“How you holding up, Olette?”

“I’m okay,” she dismissed. “It’s a lot colder on the coast than I thought.”

“Southern weather,” Roxas muttered.

Somehow, it felt like they were forcing it. He tried to change the topic, but it was hard when everyone’s gaze lingered on Olette.

Aunt Cindy, thank the Astrals, knew how to save the day.

“Did you know when Roxas when a kid, he use to yeehaw when riding Chocobos?” 

Talcott easily joined her.

“All the time. Couldn’t get him to stop. I once saw him hit a tree mid-haw.”

“I did not hit a tree mid-haw,” Roxas countered.

“You’re right,” Talcott demurely admitted. “It was mid-yee, pre-haw.”

Roxas groaned as Hayner choked on half a side of Eraqus’s cornbread and his own laughter.

“Ven used to tease me for that,” Roxas remarked. “Him and the old man never let me live it down. They were relentless.”

“Aw, c’mon,” Cindy laughed.

“At least I’m not afraid of karaoke nights,” Roxas jabbed, turning the conversation over to Hayner.

“The desklady is cute! I’m not gonna get up there and embarrass myself like that,” Hayner countered.

“That lady is like forty-seven.”

“Forty-seven ain’t that old now,” Cindy cut in.

A soft giggle could be hearx, before Olette’s voice chimed in, “C’mon, everyone. Let’s dig in before the food gets cold.”

Roxas made a mental note to talk to her later.

* * *

Cindy’s long gone to go work on the boat by the time everyone else finishes their dinner. At least some things never changed.

Olette took the time to shower while the boys tore the table down. Dishes were washed, music started. Roxas couldn’t believe Hayner went without a fight when it was his turn to take a shower.

“I smell like cheap perfume,” he blanched.

“And old whiskey,” Roxas added, scrunching his nose up. “Don’t infect the towels.”

“Just for you, I’m gonna wipe down with all of ‘em,” Hayner called back, already halfway up the stairs.

Olette retreated into her room while the boys finished tidying up, leaving Roxas to follow after her while Hayner padded his way to ruin every towel in the house. With the dishes done, Roxas just wanted some company, and… with how quiet Olette was during dinner, maybe she did too.

“You alright, Olette?”

Wait, stupid question. She was clearly not alright, Roxas chided himself before he proceeded to sit on the empty space next to her. He caught a whiff of her shampoo, her soap: a herbal-floral scent. It suited her perfectly.

“I didn’t know what I was expecting,” she admitted. “Hayner told me he finally found you, but all… this is more than I can take.”

Roxas couldn’t blame her. Olette was a good girl. Mostly. She was going out of her way already to make sure he was safe. Hayner was good at breaking her out of her little box, but...

Unlike either of the boys, Olette wasn’t a hunter. The Elshett family had taken over one of the farms located on the outskirts of Lestallum — leaving Olette to tend to the crops and livestock. She rarely ever was required or asked to attend the more serious aspects of the hunter life.

In other words, she was a homebody. Just how far outside of her comfort zone was she?

His heart grew heavy at the thought, accompanied by a strong sense of gratitude that washed that guilt away.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Roxas reassured her. “If that makes you feel any better.”

Olette smiled before finally saying, “Fill me in. On the context. Everything. I need to know what we’re doing.”

Roxas spent a good hour and a half filling her in on what had conspired since Eraqus showed up at his doorstep, about what happened at Insomnia and the journey since then. Halfway through their conversation, Hayner joined in from the doorway; he wasn’t the type to let them squirrel off on their own. 

He also mentioned the situation with his father to her, about how he had gone off alone without saying a single word to anyone about his true intentions for his last-minute journey. It brought forth unwanted feelings; it brimmed at the surface, threatening to spill over, had it not been for Olette’s thumb drawing circles into his skin.

“It’s weird. It feels like I missed an important aspect of my father’s life,” Roxas admitted, pausing for a millisecond before realisation hit him. “His. Ven’s. It feels like I’m in the dark about everything.”

Betrayal flickered in his eyes, concern in Olette’s. Even Hayner, who was normally louder than this, seemed to have the common sense to remain quiet in such a tense situation. They both recognized the weight resting upon their friend’s shoulder.

“They’re probably just trying to look out for you” she reasoned, but from what she gleaned from Hayner, this was old news to him. Everyone had told him that, but there was nothing that could truly reassure her friend. “Family’s like that. They want to help you. No matter what. Even if it means doing something stupid or dangerous.”

“Ven’s good at both,” Hayner admitted.

She took a deep breath and continued, “Roxas, what would you do if Ven were the one in danger?”

Roxas took a moment to think before realization flickered in his eyes. Finally, he answered, “I’d do anything to help him.”

“Anything? Like wielding a magic key and fighting off evil monsters to try and find him when you think he could be hurt?”

Roxas could only stare blankly ahead, too caught by her assessment to nod.

“I don’t think he’d be happy if he knew you were in danger now,” Olette remarked. “But I have a feeling he’d be relieved. To know you’d do the same thing he would.”

Olette was the glue that held everyone together, the one who kept their bonds strong. She and Pence were their middle ground, the earth between him and Hayner that gave them something to stand their friendship up on.

“Thanks, Olette.”

Olette smiled and stared back, her lips curled upward like flowers reaching for the sky.

“You’re welcome, Roxas.”

* * *

They were supposed to leave around noon, but Roxas found himself being awakened at the crack of dawn by the urgent knocking on his door. He barely had time to roll out of bed before Hayner barged in, panic written in his hazel hues, waking Roxas up from his slumber.

Roxas turned to the empty bed next to him; when had Hayner woken up?

“We need to go. My old man’s on the way.”

“What about the Chocobos? They’re a dead giveaway that we were here,” the blond asked, moving into the motion within seconds.

“Talcott said he’ll take care of that. Your aunt’s preparing the boat as we speak,” Hayner said, tossing his own belongings into his bag. Roxas did the same.

“How long do we have?”

“Not long enough to ask a dumb question like that. C’mon, Roxas!”

“Your friend is right. Olette’s waiting downstairs already,” Eraqus’s voice boomed. He did not sound very pleased to be dealing with a horde of runaway teens. Or rather, the complication that came with it.

Roxas didn’t need to ask why: if Hayner’s father ever found out that King Noctis had been involved in their getaway, it would shake the trust between the hunter community and the royal family. King Noctis was already a “war hero.” Making him a kidnapper wasn’t going to help his public image.

“And Pence?”

“He’ll meet us there,” Hayner said, though there was a darkness looming in his eyes. “He’ll have to.”

Their footsteps thundered throughout the house. Through the frenzy, Roxas saw that it was cloudy, that rain was starting to pour.

Yet, he knew, they had no choice.

“Olette, what about your family?” 

Olette flushed a deep red, the kind that he had seen on her a few times whenever she had to cover up or lie for the greater good.

Realization set upon him, just as the green-eyed girl dove into a frenzied explanation, worsened by the panic seeping from everyone else.

“I told my mother that I’ll be visiting a friend in the city. My friend has agreed to cover for me,” she said. “She just said I owe her a favor. It’ll buy me the time we need—”

“Talk later, move now!” came Hayner’s voice. Eraqus nodded in agreement, accompanied by their noises of affirmation.

The four of them made their way towards the lighthouse. Roxas noted that Talcott was missing, but when he saw that the Chocobos were missing, the pieces lined up: Talcott had probably brought the birds somewhere else so that they would remain out of sight.

Where he was taking them, Roxas didn’t know, but he hoped that they were being brought back to the ranch where they would be taken care of by the Wiz family; the Argentum family owed them a huge favor as well.

There was a huge lift in there and, once they boarded it, the machinery creaked as it hummed to life. Roxas wondered when was the last time it had been used. The scent of oil and stale water seeped into his nostrils, but it was hard to focus on what he felt other than the thudding of his heart against his ribcage. 

From the corner of his eye, Eraqus remained indifferent while Hayner’s face was scrunched up. Uncertainty was written in Olette’s eyes and she instinctively stepped closer towards Hayner, who wrapped an arm around her shoulders. 

Her other hand reached out for Roxas, fingers intertwining with his and giving him a comforting squeeze.

She offered a smile. Roxas couldn’t help but do the same in return.

“Well, guys. This is it,” Hayner said out loud.

“Looks like our vacation’s…”

Roxas took a deep breath.

“... over.”


End file.
